SALMON-SPEARING. 219 
imagined that the cunning and rapacity of man seeks every 
opportunity to intercept their progress. Nets of the most 
various form and construction are employed for their capture 5 
numbers are entrapped in enclosed spaces formed ip weirs, into 
which they enter as they push up the stream, and are then pre- 
vented by a grating of a peculiar contrivance from returning or 
getting out; and many are speared, a mode frequently practised 
at night-time, when torches are made use of to attract them to 
the surface, or to betray them by their silvery reflection to the 
attentive fisherman. 
The ruddy gleam illumining the river banks or sparkling in 
the agitated waters, the black sky above, the deep contrasts of 
light and shade, attach a romantic interest to this nocturnal 
sport, which has been both practised and sung by Walter 
Scott. 
“Tis blithe along the midnight tide 
With stalwart arm the boat to guide, 
On high the dazzling blaze to rear 
And heedful plunge the barbed spear. 
Rock, wood, and scour emerging bright, 
Fling on the stream their ruddy light, 
And from the bank our band appears 
Like Genii armed with fiery spears.” 
The natural history of the salmon was until lately but very 
imperfectly known, as the parr (brandling, samlet) and the grilse, 
which are now fully proved to be but intermediate stages of its 
growth, were supposed by Yarrell to be distinct fishes. The first 
person who seems to have suspected the true nature of the parr 
was James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, who in his usual eccen- 
tric way took some pains to verify his opinion. As an angler, he 
had often caught the parr in its transition state, and had fre- 
quently captured smolts (at that time the only acknowledged 
youthful salmon) with the scales barely covering the bars or 
finger marks of the parr. Wondering at this, he marked a great 
number of the lesser fish and offered rewards of whisky (being 
himself a great admirer of the genuine mountain-dew) to the 
peasantry to bring him any fish that had evidently undergone 
the change. These crude experiments of the talented shepherd 
convinced him that the parr were the young of the salmon in 
the first stage, and since then professed naturalists have fully 
settled the question by watching the egg into life, and tracing 
