40 THE SALMON. 



pletely as it can be proved that cocks and heiis are the 

 parents of chickens. The case was thus proved from 

 both ends the parr was shown to be the salmon in 

 infancy, and the salmon to be the parr in maturity. 

 However, to make this double assurance trebly sure, Mr. 

 Shaw caught in the river two salmon about to spawn, 

 and having expressed their spawn within his own watery 

 precincts, the result again in due time was parrs. Twenty 

 years afterwards, similar experiments, on a larger scale, 

 and with the same results, were made at the experi- 

 mental and breeding ponds, Stormontfield, on the Tay, 

 where parrs, and nothing but parrs, were hatched from 

 the ova of salmon by hundreds of thousands ; and those 

 experiments have been repeated at the same place with 

 the same results in every one of the last ten years. No 

 man has ever shown that anything else is ever produced 

 from salmon-ova but parrs, nor that parrs are ever pro- 

 duced from anything else but salmon-ova, and until this 

 is at least pretended to be done, no more is needed 

 to be said. 



The question as to the age at which the young fish 

 emerges from the parr stage, and assumes the appearance 

 and habits of the smolt, has been disputed more ration- 

 ally ; and though it has also been made the subject of 

 experiment, cannot yet be regarded as quite decided or 

 if so, the decision, according to our view, is to the effect 

 that the disputants on both sides are about equally 

 wrong and equally right. Let us trace the growth of 

 the young fish ab ovo as far as it was made visible by 

 the experiments of the seasons 1853-54 (which have not 

 been found to differ from other seasons), in the Stor- 



