THE CHAR AND THE SMELT 279 
or rose colour, with silvery reflections; but owing to the 
absence of pigment in the scales, the fish is semi-transparent, 
the bones and internal organs being visible through the skin. 
In size the smelt seldom or never exceeds eight inches in length. 
The flesh is exceedingly delicate, with a peculiar favour unlike 
that of any other fish. 
Little do townspeople understand of its excellence, for 
smelts are more perishable than most fish. To eat them in 
perfection one should rise betimes on a fair morning in October, 
and watch the nets being drawn ashore. To the distance of 
nearly one hundred yards the gentle breeze wafts the fragrance 
of the catch ; fill your basket with the spoil, carry it straight to 
the kitchen, have them fried without cleaning, and sit down 
and enjoy such a breakfast as all the resources of the Mansion 
House could not furnish. 
Formerly, smelts—or sparlings, as they are called in 
Scotland—were reckoned as white fish, fair booty for anybody 
who chose to net them. Science, however, having assigned to 
them their true place among migratory fish of the salmon kind, 
they come under the provisions of the Salmon-Fisheries Acts, 
and form part of the several salmon-fishings in the waters they 
frequent. But in consequence of no close-time being provided 
for them, they are netted during the spawning season, which 
has resulted in the ruin of a remunerative industry in some 
rivers, such as the Annan and the Nith. It is gratifying to 
observe that the Royal Commission on Salmon-Fisheries in their 
report just issued (August, 1902) recommend the establishment 
of a yearly close-time. In the Cree, one of the Solway rivers, 
the salmon-fishings passed in 1900 under the management of 
an angling association, the members of which were impressed 
by the destruction wrought by the small-meshed nets of the 
smelt-fishers among the smolts of salmon and sea-trout de- 
scending to the sea in April and May. Now-this includes the 
period when the smelts ascend to spawn ; gravid smelts and 
migrating smolts were hauled out indiscriminately, and tens of 
