APPENDIX. 169 



caught at or near the mouth of another river at some distance 

 from its own ? 



H. It is admitted by all parties that salmon, when leaving 

 their rivers, migrate to the north. It is therefore not surpris- 

 ing to find salmon intercepted in the innumerable traps laid 

 for them when they return on their way south. For instance, 

 the Tweed bull-trout, commonly known as the " black tail/' 

 a very conspicuous fish, may be intercepted on its way from 

 the north, but it has never yet been seen to the south of the 

 Tweed ; and if its instinct was not perfect, the Dee, Don, and 

 other rivers, by this time of day, would abound with it, as the 

 Tweed does. I may here hint my belief, that it will prove im- 

 possible ever to succeed in propagating salmon in the Australian 

 rivers ; and this in consequence of the inflexible instinct always 

 drawing them in their migrations towards the north pole. 

 Were this not the case, all the rivers in South America, Africa, 

 and India, would have salmon in them, making an annual 

 migration to the south pole. Thus, had nature so decreed it, 

 there would have been salmon in the southern as well as in the 

 northern hemisphere. 



M. Now that you have brought salmon back to the rivers, 

 what is their condition and general appearance ? 



H. They have a beautiful silvery appearance, and are in 

 high condition. Before ice was made a substitute for boiling 

 and kitting salmon, it was proved by the quantity of oil a 

 perquisite of the salmon-boiler skimmed off the boiling kettles, 

 that spring fish invariably produced more oil than summer 

 fish ; thus showing that early fish are superior as food to late 

 fish. It was also proved by those boilers, that they generally 

 had little or no food in their stomachs ; that every salmon 

 contained either roe or milt, and that the quality of the fish 

 decreased in an inverse ratio to the growth of the roe, and 

 as the spawning season approached. A curious fact, relative 

 to the roe in grilse and salmon, and proving in a great mea- 

 sure my assertion that they are distinct fish, is, that when the 

 grilse appear in May and June, their roe is in precisely the 

 same stage of growth as it was in the salmon when they 

 made their appearance in the rivers in January, from which 



