158 NATURAL HISTORY OF SALMON. 



narrator of them, or the narrator of them to the 

 public. I can, therefore, without on my own part 

 infringing the rules of modesty, pass judgment on 

 the abilities of Mr. Young and the value of his 

 facts, exactly in the way a translator is permitted 

 to speak of an original author whose works he is 

 translating. 



Who is Mr. Young ? That gentleman, some 

 seven hundred miles far away from me at the 

 time I write this, will pardon me if I tell the 

 world who and what he is. 



He has been connected with salmon fishing for 

 upwards of thirty-five years; 1st. on the river 

 Tay, and then on the justly famous river Shin, 

 and other rivers in Sutherlandshire. " I have 

 been," he says in a private letter to me, dated 

 Dec. 17. 1849, and which, at the risk of offending 

 him, I make in part public, " experimenting on 

 salmon for upwards of 30 years. Few, I believe, 

 if any, have paid the attention to the habits of 

 salmon I have done. To enumerate all the ex- 

 periments I have made would fill volumes. On 

 this point I must abridge. In 1834, and for a 

 number of years following, we [I suppose Mr. 

 Young and his assistants] marked spawned fish, 

 for the purpose of settling the question, denied 

 by many, of the return of salmon to their 



