110 THE SALMON. 



them and their eggs exposed to innumerable dangers, 

 and where no man is able, and very few men are 

 willing, to extend protection, or even refrain from de- 

 struction. It is reasonable to suppose that the more 

 aspiring and daring habits of the Tweed salmon are at 

 least in great part natural and voluntary, for there are 

 very remarkable differences between the habits of the 

 salmon of different rivers as to the length of their time 

 and their journey in fresh water, before they assume, so 

 to speak, the manners and customs of their new element. 

 Thus the salmon of the Ness, and scarcely less of the 

 Spey, the Tay, and other rivers, are many of them con- 

 tent to choose their fresh-water haunts immediately above 

 the tide, and to begin the very day of their arrival to do 

 as fish in rivers ought to do, including the taking of the 

 angler's lure ; but a Tweed salmon, though at low tide 

 he is in fresh water as soon as he doubles the pier of 

 Berwick, and can run out of all tidal influences in half 

 an hour, will not, except under circumstances of dire 

 necessity, take a day's or an hour's lodging, still less any 

 refreshment in the shape of a bunch of feathers and 

 barbed steel, until he is at least twelve, and scarcely 

 indeed till he is twenty miles on his upward journey. 

 It considerably helps out this explanation to add, that 

 the natural course of the two rivers tends to the same 

 result : owing to the steepness of the land, few of the 

 tributaries of the Tay are available for salmon, and 

 almost the only, though quite a sufficient spawning- 

 ground is the main river, which issues almost full-grown 

 from the parent lake ; while the Tweed, in its course 

 through five counties, and (with the single exception of 



