16 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



curtailed the number of breeders, by extending the period of 

 fishing eighteen days beyond the usual time. When on the 

 fords the breeders are easily destroyed. A man may then kill 

 them sometimes with even a walking-stick, in the higher parts 

 of the rivers, and in the streams where there is often scarcely 

 water sufficient to cover the back fins, so much are these fish 

 brought by their instincts, from the depths of the ocean, within 

 our power. The thief who steals a sheep from a common is 

 hanged ; but the greater and far more destructive thief, who, 

 without a particle of more right, steals the breeding fish, con- 

 taining 18,000 ova each, and which are then rendered by 

 nature lean, black, slimy, and disgusting, is only fined a mere 

 trifle ; yet, whether with reference to the proprietors of the 

 fishery, or to the public, his offence is unquestionably infinitely 

 the greater of the two. Such is the consistency of our laws, 

 the wisdom of our Legislators, and the discrimination of our 

 Judges. 



After the spawning operations are concluded, the spawners, 

 then denominated kelts, or spent fish, retire to the sea. The 

 kelts generally drop down the river during the winter and early 

 part of the spring, in so exhausted a state, that many of them 

 are found dead on the banks. At this period vermin are found 

 in the gills of the spawners, that is, after spawning, but are 

 never found save in kelts, or spent fish ; though the stake-net 

 fishers would wish to have it supposed that they attack all 

 salmon in rivers and force them to return to the sea, which is 

 not the case, for after a salmon has entered a river it never 

 leaves it till it has spawned ; nor, as we have just said, are 

 vermin ever found in their gills till then. Whether such vermin 

 be the consequence of their emaciated state after spawning, as 

 in the case of other animals, or to what cause they may be im- 

 puted, is one of those secrets of nature to which we have not 

 the key. 



Every river, and even every branch or tributary stream of a 

 river in which salmon are produced, has a variety of the species 

 peculiar to itself, and which return regularly to it from their mi- 

 gration to the sea. This is an important fact in the history of 

 salmon, not merely with reference to the natural history of the 



