RESULTS OF SALMON MARKING 57 



growing fish, is reported to have caused considerable 

 laceration. 



From those returns we learned something of the 

 great increase of weight attained in salmon after 

 the sea has been visited, and of the length of time 

 certain individual fish had been absent from the 

 river ; but the investigations were not sufficiently 

 sustained to enable any one to understand the 

 variations which occur in any district or in different 

 districts and to make a sound deduction as to the 

 general habit and life history of the salmon in its 

 migrations, feeding, and reproduction. Still less 

 could proper deductions be made from other obser- 

 vations made by Young of Invershin, Fraser, 

 Buist, and others, whose method of marking was 

 almost invariably that of cutting the adipose fin of 

 the fish. 



The one outstanding series of observations in those 

 earlier days was carried through by the Tweed 

 Commissioners, who from 1851 to 1864, and again 

 from 1870 to 1873, conducted a valuable set of 

 operations to elucidate the life history of the salmon 

 and bull-trout of the Tweed — investigations which 

 were scientifically conducted as well as sustained with 

 regularity. These investigations have already been 

 referred to as yielding us the three early examples 

 of marked (wired) smolts recaptured as grilse. 



The more recent marking operations carried on 

 by the Fishery Board for Scotland were commenced 

 by Mr. Archer during his term of office as Inspector 

 of Salmon Fisheries. They were instituted on the 

 lines of experiments already made by him in Norway 



