BAD ACT OF PARLIAMENT. 167 



Duke of Sutherland's for instance in the north of 

 Scotland — wherein the cruives are taken up early 

 in August, and all netting ceases about the middle 

 of that month, and by no means to those im- 

 poverished rivers, the renters or proprietors of 

 which, killing the goose with the golden eggs, go 

 on slaughtering pregnant salmon during the whole 

 of the destructive period allowed them by the fatal 

 clauses of Mr. Home Drummond's Act. From 

 the 1st of December to the middle of the follow- 

 ing March the number of salmon on the spawning- 

 beds diminishes in about the same proportion that 

 it had increased from the middle of September 

 to the 1st of December. At the end of March 

 scarcely a pair of salmon can be met with per- 

 forming the functions of procreation.* 



* I beg the reader to bear in mind that, if, as asserted 

 in the text, the spawning season extends, more or less ac- 

 tively, from September to March, there must be salmon- 

 fry (the smolts of Mr. Young) of twelve months old in the 

 corresponding six months of each successive year, and there 

 must be salmon-fry marked with the transverse bars for 

 about eight months in the year. What then becomes of 

 Mr. Shaw's assertion that, — "Immediately after the mi- 

 gration of the two years-old parr (which the latter always 

 affect [qy. effect ?] about the beginning of May, under the 

 name of salmon-fry, there is no other parr, besides such as 

 have been recently hatched, to be found in the river, save 

 those which correspond with this specimen [a salmon-fry 



M 4 



