SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 127 



These rivers are discharged from the largest lakes in Scotland, and 

 consequently during the winter and early spring months send down 

 water purified of all its disagreeable qualities, and in a state liked 

 by the fish ; while the late rivers, running from a mossy country, 

 only commence to yield fish when the loch rivers above mentioned 

 are beginning to fail (that is, when their water begins to become 

 impure), indeed, when the seasons of some of them are terminated. 

 In the Ness the season commences on the 10th of December legally, 

 and the river immediately commences to give clean fish : they con- 

 tinue to increase in quantity till the first of March ; they then 

 decline gradually till the middle of May, and from that time till the 

 end of July scarcely a salmon is taken in the river." 



The water of this river must be shockingly impure during 

 the summer months, when the water of other rivers is in its 

 purest state. If Dr Fleming's plan of restricting the fishing 

 season in all rivers to the summer months, that being the sea- 

 son when the engines of his friends fish best, were adopted, the 

 river Ness would not add many salmon to the common supply. 

 Mr Steavenson, however, as we said before, forgot to explain 

 why, if the purity of the water is what induces salmon to enter 

 the rivers at particular seasons, none enter them save their own 

 fish. Yet he tells us that the seasons of the early rivers are 

 nearly over towards the month of March, which might show 

 him that each river has its own season, that is, that the fish 

 of the different rivers are so constituted that they come to their 

 respective rivers at their allotted time ; the fish of some rivers 

 beginning to come in November while others do not come 

 till March and some not even till May. The salmon of the 

 Shinn, which is one of the rivers to which he alludes, begin to 

 come in November and December, through ice, and through 

 miles of the very impure water of several other rivers, all col- 

 lected in the common channel ; yet they push their way 

 through that impure water to their own river. It is not, as 

 we have before remarked, after the salmon have reached the 

 rivers, and have tasted the water, that the returning instinct 

 commences its operation. It must come into action long before 

 then ; or, to speak in the Quaker style, the spirit must move 

 the fish of some rivers to quit their migratory abode in the 



