CHAP, v.] MR. BUIST ON THE PARR. 187 



Mr. Buist, in one of his letters on the progress of artificial 

 breeding at the Stormontfield ponds, says : " There is at pre- 

 sent a mystery as regards the progress of the young salmon. 

 There can be no doubt that all in our ponds are really and 

 truly the offspring of salmon ; no other fish, not even the seed 

 of them, could by any possibility get into the ponds. Now we 

 see that about one half have gone off as smolts, returning in 

 their season as grilses ; the other half remain as parrs, and 

 the milt in the males is as much developed, in proportion to 

 the size of the fish, as their brethren of the same age seven to 

 ten pounds weight, whilst these same parrs in the ponds do not 

 exceed one ounce in weight. This is an anomaly in nature which 

 I fear cannot be cleared up at present. I hope, however, by 

 proper attention, some light may be thrown upon it from our 

 experiments next spring. The female parrs in the pond have 

 their ova so undeveloped that the granulations can scarcely 

 be discovered by a lens of some power. It is strange that 

 both Young's and Shaw's theories are likely to prove correct, 

 though seemingly so contradictory, and the much- disputed 

 point settled, that parrs (such as ours at least) are truly the 

 young of the salmon." 



It is quite certain that parr are young salmon, and that a 

 parr becomes a smolt and goes to the sea, although there 

 are still to be found, no doubt, a few wrong-headed people 

 who will not be convinced on the point, but pridefully main- 

 tain all the old salmon theories and prejudices. With them 

 the parr is still a distinct fish, the smolt is the true young of 

 Salmo salar in its first stage, and a grilse is just a grilse and 

 nothing more. However, these old-world people will in time 

 pass away (there is no hope of convincing them), and then the 

 modern views of salmon biography, founded as they are on 

 laborious personal investigation, will ultimately prevail. 



THE SMOLT AND GRILSE. But the great parr mystery is 

 still unsolved that is to say, no one knows on what principle 



