THE BREEDING OF SALMON. 127 



kept for a year or two in a pond at Bowhill, from 

 which wire-grating prevented any egress, they were 

 found to have increased greatly in length, without 



the Superintendent of Tweed police, ponds were constructed in 

 imitation of those at Stormontlifield on the Tay, in which im- 

 pregnated ova were deposited to be hatched. We remember 

 having taken a specimen of the young salmon, two months old 

 and about the size of a small minnow, from the lower pond; 

 but we do not know what the result of the experiments was. 

 At intervals for the last fifteen years, however, experiments as 

 to the history and habits of the salmon have been conducted at 

 the mouth of the Tweed. Smolts have been marked on several 

 occasions, by cutting their fins, or by twisting loops of thin 

 silver wire into their gills or tails. Marking by the mutilation 

 of fins is, however, a most unsatisfactory method of making such 

 experiments : and nothing certain can be affirmed from it. But 

 of the smolts marked with silver wire, three, we believe, have 

 been recaptured as grilse. The results are contrary to the 

 common belief of the grilse's age. "We have seen two, one of 

 which was marked with wire in the tail as a smolt in May 1851 

 and taken again as a 4-lb grilse in August 1852 ; the other was 

 marked with wire in the gill, as a smolt in May 1855, and 

 caught again as a grilse in 1856. The former of these fish is at 

 Berwick, the other is in the possession of the Duke of Rox- 

 btirghe at Floors Castle. Another was taken in August 1858, 

 which had been marked in the spring of 1857. These are 

 certainly strong facts, and their authenticity is indisputable ; 

 we are disposed to accept the inference that they point to, and 

 to hold that the smolt does not return to the river as a grilse 

 the same year in which it goes down to the sea. Many kelts 

 have also been marked to ascertain the difference between their 

 condition when kelted and when clean ; but, so far as we have 

 heard, with nothing at all like the surprisingly exact returns 

 that Mr. Andrew Young of Ivershin chronicles. Of a number 

 of kelts of the salmo eriox marked at the mouth of the Whit- 

 adder, one was shortly afterwards caught at the mouth of the 

 Tyne, another at Yarmouth, and the skeleton of a third, with 



