FECUNDATION OF SALMON. 63 



link of the bed, and deposits therein a portion of her 

 ova. That done, she retires down stream, and the male 

 instantly takes her place, and pouring, by emission, a 

 certain quantity of milt over the deposited ova, impreg- 

 nates them. After this, the fish commence a second 

 excavation immediately above the first, and in a straight 

 line with it. Tn making the excavations they relieve 

 one another. When one fish grows tired of its work, 

 it drops down stream until it is refreshed, and then 

 with renovated powers resumes its labours, relieving 

 at the same time its partner." 



This account of the manner in which the ova of sal- 

 mon are fecundated is no doubt the true one ; and yet 

 it is necessary to notice the speculations and experi- 

 ments of certain recent writers, who maintain that the 

 ova are impregnated while within the body of the female 

 salmon, and by actual copulation with the male. M. 

 Bonnet, the Genevese philosopher, writing in 1781, 

 while modestly confessing that we know very little 

 about the amours of fishes, positively declares, " Le 

 male et la femelle sont prives des parties propres a 

 la copulation/'* Mr T. T. Stoddart, however, an en- 

 thusiastic angler and a very amusing writer, knows 

 more about the conjugal rites of fishes, and roundly 

 asserts that salmon are provided with copulative 

 organs, which they undeniably use, he thinks. " I 

 hold it," says he, " to be a palpable anomaly that no 

 direct act of coition should be considered to take place 

 betwixt the milter and spawner, and that long previous 

 to the effusion of the ova."f Knowing Mr Stoddart to 

 be a poet, we should have taken the liberty of passing 

 by such a specimen of his imaginative faculty ; but 

 when Dr Robertson of Dunkeld professes to have de- 

 monstrated, by careful experiment, that the ova of trout 

 are impregnated previous to exclusion, we feel bound 

 to attend to the theory of our poetical angler. It is 

 contradicted by the repeated experiments of Messrs 

 * 'CEuvres,' tome ix. p. 287. t * Angler's Companion, ' p. 189. 



