40 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



occur, he can really suppose, that at least half, if not three- 

 fourths, of all the fish of the early rivers, are year after year, 

 with systematic regularity, led into those rivers by the prema- 

 ture exercise of their instinctive functions. The winter months 

 are, in truth, as much the regular fishing season of the early 

 rivers as the summer months are of the late rivers ; and yet 

 the Doctor, who seems utterly ignorant of the distinction be- 

 tween early and late rivers, tell us that all this fishing is 

 entirely owing to a premature operation of the instincts of the 

 fish ! Here we have science, in opposition to nature, in per- 

 fection. The Doctor forgets he told us that the fish spawn in 

 December and January, so that if they require only, as he says, 

 a few months of previous residence in the fresh water, and that 

 those which enter the rivers four, five, or six months before 

 spawning, must do so from a premature exercise of their in- 

 stincts ; the whole of the summer fish must also be in the same 

 unfortunate predicament that is, the fishery altogether. 



The worthy and Eeverend Doctor might, we think, have 

 found, if not so scientific, at least a more orthodox reason, in 

 the bounty of Providence, who has formed so many animals 

 evidently for the use of man. He has made the rivers to pro- 

 duce a fish, of the richest quality, in such abundance that the 

 rivers themselves could not supply food for one-thousandth 

 part of them ; He therefore engrafted into them the wonderful 

 instinct of migration, by which they are led to distant regions 

 of the ocean, where they grow large and fat, and from whence 

 they are made to return again to the rivers thus bringing them 

 within the power of man, as an article of subsistence, as well as 

 for the reproduction of the species. If the latter were the sole 

 object of their return, it would be undoubtedly answered by 

 their coming all at once in August or September, previous to 

 spawning, and no early rivers would be necessary ; but instead 

 of this, from their first appearance in the early rivers in No- 

 vember, till they cease coming in the late rivers in October, 

 every stream-tide brings with it a fresh supply, in some river 

 or other, in constant succession, of clean fish during the whole 

 year. The intention of Providence cannot therefore be mis- 

 taken ; the whole history of the origin and migration of the 



