36 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



rest pass on. Sometimes, however, the salmon remain a little 

 while in the tide-way of the river, where many of them are 

 caught by the river fishers ; and sometimes the shoal is broken 

 and dispersed by the stake-nets placed on their course. When 

 they reach their respective rivers, the objects of their destina- 

 tion, they never leave them, as we said before, till they have 

 spawned.* 



Such appears to us to be the progress of the salmon and 

 herring tribes, led in their infant state, as fry, by nature, or 

 instinct, to their northern nursery, where they grow large and 

 full fed, and return at stated periods, in shoals, like fleets of 

 ships, to their respective destinations, pursuing the same unde- 

 viating course, the same track, year after year, which their 

 predecessors did 4000 years ago, and which succeeding shoals 

 will continue to follow in all future time, unless the race be 

 destroyed by the blind rapacity of man. 



After the salmon get into the rivers, the exertions which 

 they make to push their way up, and to overcome every 

 obstruction in their way, form a singular trait in their history. 

 The stake-net owners tell us they are constantly running down 

 from the rivers again to the sea an assertion which carries 

 absurdity upon the very face of it. If all the salmon are 

 under the influence of the same instincts, which they neces- 

 sarily must be, it is contrary to common sense to suppose that, 

 while some of them ascend the rivers with ardour, others, after 

 having entered the rivers, return to the sea, before they have 

 effected the purpose for which they came there. The assertion 

 is directly in the teeth of every principle of the migratory 

 system, and rests, besides, upon no proof whatever. We have 

 seen a salmon, in the early part of the season, attempting to 

 push his way up a shallow part of a river, and tried to beat 

 him back with a stick ; but after receiving repeated blows on 

 the back, instead of turning down, he pushed his way on, and 



* Mr Stephen states, in the Committee, " Our cruives on the river Don are 

 BO constructed that salmon of ten pounds weight can at all times go up, but 

 none can descend, past the cruives. We fish generally in the pool above the 

 cruives ; and if the unspawned salmon returned again down the river, we would 

 undoubtedly catch them there, which is never the case.- They are never seen 

 to descend the river, except as kelts, after having spawned." 



