THE STORMONTFIELD EXPERIMENT. 179 



AMICUS. Your remarks remind me of the 

 account I have lately read, of the results of 

 an experiment recently made on the artificial 

 breeding of the salmon, at Stormontfield, on 

 the Tay, how some of the young fish assumed 

 the silvery scale, became smelts, and migrated ' 

 the first year ; whilst others continued parrs, 

 and did not assume the smelt state till the 

 following year, when in turn they also sought 

 the sea, 



PISCATOR. Those results are instructive; 

 they help to reconcile the apparently conflicting 

 observations of Messrs. Young and Shaw. It 

 .has been made a question whether the fry 

 that migrated the second year were in reality 

 hatched at the same time as those which took 

 their seaward departure twelve months earlier 

 on the supposition that parr of the year 

 following might possibly find their way into 

 the pond ; but, from all I have been able to 

 learn, there . is no good ground whatever for 

 the suspicion, inasmuch as the water, the feeder 

 of the pond, passes through a bank of gravel, 

 excluding thereby the idea of any such error. 

 In reasoning, perhaps, on these matters, we 

 are too apt under the influence of ana- 



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