Sir W. Jardine on the Sea or Salmon Trout. 49 



two years, the spawning season lias been advanced by a month or 

 six weeks. It varies in ahnost every river, and hence will be seen 

 the impropiiety of a general or common close-time, some waters 

 in fact being open when they should be closed, and the reverse. 



It is a common remark with fishermen, that no food is ever 

 found in the stomach of the salmon taken in the sea ; and this 

 circumstance has been handed down by almost all writers for a 

 long period. This saying, for it deserved no farther credit, 

 has only lately been examined into by an anatomist, in the 

 Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, that the only 

 and peculiar food of the salmon in the salt water consisted 

 of small monoculi and entomostraca, with the ova of star-fish.* 

 In the north of Sutherland a mode of fishing salmon is some- 

 times successfully practised in the firths, where sand-eels are 

 used for bait : a line is attached to a buoy or bladder, and allow- 

 ed to fioat with the tide up the narrow estuaries. The salmon 

 are also said to be occasionally taken at the lines set for had- 

 docks, baited with sand-eels. At the mouths of rivers they rise 

 freely at the artificial fly within fifty yards of the sea, and the 

 common earth-worm is a deadly bait for the clean salmon. All 

 the other marine salmon are known to be very voracious ; and 

 there is nothing in the structure of the mouth or strong teeth of 

 the common salmon, to warrant us to suppose that there is any 

 material difference in their food. 



2. Salmo Trutta or Sea Trout. — The fish next of import- 

 ance in Sutherland, is what there, and indeed in the whole 

 North Highlands, is called the Sea Trout ; but under this 

 general name two fish at least seem to be included. By the 

 taxmen or fishers, they are, however, only distinguished as 

 the larger and smaller kinds, and by the different season at 

 which they run. The first or early running kind was considered 

 to be Salmo trutta. The run of these fish commences about 

 the first week of June, and is at its greatest height towards the 

 middle of the month, the numbers decreasing with the advance 

 of the season, until they are succeeded by the later running fish. 

 In approaching the entrance of rivers, or in seeking out, as it 



• Faber, in his Natural History of the Fishes of Iceland, remarks, " The 



common salmon feeds on small fishes, and various small marine animals." 



Fleming says their favourite food in the sea is the sand-eel Edit. 



vor,. xviii. NO. XXXV. — January 1835. d 



