16 MIGRATION OF THE SMOLT. 



brood all the assistance you can possibly afford them to 

 perform their own final functions in the upper part of the 

 rivers, where, with these helps, the fry would be safely bred 

 up to their true perfection. Salmon stop in the rivers 

 where they are bred (for this information I am indebted to 

 Mr. Olive of Gloucester) fifteen months before they mi- 

 grate ; and they return in three or four months, weighing 

 pounds for months, and are then termed grilse. These 

 facts have been very ably described by Mr. Young, who 

 superintends the fishery of His Grace the Duke of Suther- 

 land in Sutherlandshire. At any rate, as grilse, they make 

 for their spawning-grounds early ; and, having few eggs to 

 deposit, they soon make for the sea again, and return to 

 their native stream as salmon, weighing from seven pounds 

 upwards. They are now in their fourth summer ; and at 

 this age the ovarium varies in size according to the weight 

 of the fish, some containing ten thousand, and others 

 twenty thousand eggs ! I cannot forbear from asking, 

 what would be the produce of a single healthy fish in two 

 years, if, upon the protective principle, no egg became ad- 

 dled, and the germ of life were not thus prematurely cut 

 off, or where the fry were bred unhurt and unmolested ? 

 The natural hills where they breed are now more than half 

 of them destroyed, an'd the young become the prey of every 

 poacher, for such I deem the man who takes a young sal- 

 mon fry. The number produced would be enormous, and 



