30 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



be contrary to the general law implanted in their nature : 

 Deleterious ingredients, as lime thrown into the water, might 

 probably kill all the salmon in a river, but would not make 

 them abandon it, and go to another river. We cannot conceive 

 that an instinct, engrafted from the creation in a race, can cease 

 its operation, or abandon them for a few years, and afterwards 

 return again into them. It would be an anomaly totally 

 beyond our comprehension. If Nature works by general laws, 

 nothing can overset those laws. The herrings of a particular 

 loch may, by over-destruction, be rendered so scarce, that the 

 few that do return may be deemed undeserving of notice ; or 

 they may be liable to accidents we are unacquainted with. Such 

 scarcity, we know, has been complained of at Lochroag. The 

 herrings of that loch are of a particularly large breed, harsh in 

 the flesh, and fibrous, and easily distinguished from those of 

 other lochs ; yet we never could learn that during their scarcity 

 there they were found elsewhere, though they would be recog- 

 nised at a glance amid the herrings of the other lochs. 



If, then, the herrings perform a migration to the Polar Sea, 

 we think it very probable that salmon, which, as we said, have 

 so many analogies in common with them, migrate to the same 

 regions ; for we can see nothing more extraordinary in the fry 

 of salmon, bred in our rivers, doing so, than in the fry of the her- 

 rings, produced in the friths and bays into which those rivers 

 discharge themselves. It is evident that the salmon retire to a 

 considerable distance from land ; for, exclusive of the reasons 

 adduced by Dr Fleming, there can be no doubt that if they 

 remained in the seas around our coasts they would sometimes 

 be observed by the crews of the vessels that are constantly 

 navigating those seas, which is not the case ; they would, too, 

 be at all times flocking into the rivers : there would not be 

 that periodical, regular, annual return, of shoal after shoal, as 

 at present ; and, besides, we do not think there would be food 

 in our comparatively barren seas for the great quantities of sal- 

 mon and grilses that are produced in all our rivers. They evi- 

 dently do not live on haddocks, whitings, or mackarel ; and 

 the few sand-eels that are on our banks would afford very little 

 sustenance to such numbers ; but herrings are found frequently 



