NATU11AL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 35 



of skegger ; when in the East they avow him penk ; but 

 to northward, brood and locksper ; so from thence to a 

 tecon ; then to a salmon." About the same period, 

 Izaak Walton enumerates the names of samlet, skegger, 

 and tecon as names of the young of the salmon, im- 

 agining them, however, to be the young of three different 

 species of salmon ; and he tells us that he knew (by 

 hearsay) of experiments on this point made before his 

 day, not dissimilar in mode, object, and results to some 

 that have been made in our own. Thus : " It is said, 

 that after he is got into the sea, he becomes from a sam- 

 let, not so big as a gudgeon, to be a salmon, in so short 

 a time as a gosling becomes to be a goose. Much of 

 this has been observed by tying a ribbon or some known 

 tape or thread in the tail of some young salmons which 

 have been taken in weirs as they have swimmed towards 

 the salt water, and then by taking a part of them again 

 with the known mark at the same place at their re- 

 turn from the sea, which is usually about six months 

 after." Again, a hundred years later, we have Captain 

 Burt (an English engineer officer, who resided in the 

 Highlands between the two Jacobite Rebellions, and 

 wrote a book still of great value and interest), when 

 referring to the river Ness, speaking thus : " There is 

 great plenty of a small fish the people call a little trout, 

 but of another species, and is exceeding good, called in 

 the north of England a branlin. Then they are so like 

 the salmon frye, that they are hardly to be distinguished, 

 only the skals come off the frye in handling, the others 

 have none." Burt failed to see that the branlin and the 

 " frye" are the same fish in different stages, and to note 



