OPINIONS OF YARRELL AND BUIST. 183 



dred years. As a proof of the difficulty of arriving at a 

 correct conclusion amidst the conflict of evidence, I may cite 

 the opinion of Yarrell, who held the parr to be a distinct fish. 

 " That the parr," he says, " is not the young of the salmon, or, 

 indeed, of any other of the large species of Salmonidse, as 

 still considered by some, is sufficiently obvious from the cir- 

 cumstance that parr by hundreds may be taken in the rivers 

 all the summer, long after the fry of the year of the larger 

 migratory species have gone down to the sea." Mr, Yarrell 

 also says, " The smolt or young salmon is by the fishermen of 

 some rivers called * a laspring ; ' " and explains, " The laspring 

 of some rivers is the young of the true salmon ; but in others, 

 as I know from having had specimens sent me, the laspring 

 is really only a parr." Mr. Yarrell further states the preval- 

 ence of an opinion " that parrs were hybrids, and all of them 

 males." Many gentlemen who would not admit that parr were 

 salmon in their first stage have lived to change their opinion. 

 My friend Mr. Eobert Buist, the intelligent and very 

 obliging conservator of the Stormontfield breeding-ponds, is 

 one of the gentlemen who now finds, from the results of most 

 accurate experiments conducted under his own personal 

 superintendence, that he was in error in holding the parr to 

 be a distinct fish. A very eminent living naturalist, who has 

 now seen all the stages of the question, said at one time that 

 the parr had no connection whatever with the migratory 

 salmon ; and also that " males are found so far advanced as 

 to have the milt flow on being handled ; but at the same 

 time, and indeed all the females which I have examined, had 

 the roe in a backward state, and they have not been dis- 

 covered spawning in any of the shallow streams or lesser 

 rivulets, like the trout." Such extracts could be multiplied 

 to almost any extent, but I can only give one more, and it is 

 from the same writer. After minutely describing the anatomy 

 of the fish, he thus sums up : " In this state, therefore, I have 



