234 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 



of individual fish. William Scrope, writing in 1843, said that 

 of the many hundreds of salmon which fell to his share in 

 the Tweed, not one pulled the scale to thirty pounds. He 

 describes, indeed, how in 1815 Robert Kerse hooked a clean 

 salmon of " about forty pounds " in the Makerstoun water ; 

 but that fish never came to the scale ; for, although Rob 

 landed him after having " sair work wi* him for some hours," 

 the salmon escaped while his captor was looking for a stone to 

 fell him with. Nowadays, thirty-pounders may be termed 

 frequent in the Tweed ; never a season passes without forty- 

 pounders being recorded, and there can be no doubt about the 

 accuracy of the following weights of fish killed by fly-fishing. 



1873. A salmon of 53! Ib. Captor not recorded. 

 1886. One of 57! Ib. killed by Mr. Pryor on the Floors water. 

 1889. One of 55 Ib. killed by Mr. Brereton on the Willowbush, 

 Mertoun (a favourite cast of Scrope's). 



1892. One of 51^ Ib. killed at Birgham by Col. the Hon. W. Home. 



Depend upon it, had Scrope heard of fish such as these he 

 would have gossiped about them in his own delightful way, 

 and he could not have failed to hear of them, had they been 

 taken, for nowhere is rumour more fleet than by the riverside 

 among anglers. I fail to imagine any cause for the increase of 

 weight here manifest, except that the protection of spent fish 

 has enabled some of them to attain a greater age, with a 

 proportionate increase in avoirdupois. If that is so, would it 

 not be a disastrous error to withdraw that protection, upon the 

 a -priori ground that kelts devour their own young ? 



Several points of interest in the life-history of the salmon 

 have been elucidated, or brought near elucidation, by the 

 researches of the German ichthyologists and the Edinburgh 

 Committee. Among others is that of the well-known change 

 of colour after the fish leaves the sea. Its coat, when it 

 ascends the river, is indescribably pure and bright, the silvery 

 tone being imparted by the deposit under the scales of an 



