192 ON THE BREEDING OF SALMON. 



Upon the whole, I may safely say, that the proportion 

 of spawners throughout the year stands in the relation 

 of nearly three to one, when reckoned with the propor- 

 tion of milters, a fact which excludes the idea that 

 salmon regularly pair off for the purpose of deposition. 

 Nor has Shaw, I notice, very tenaciously insisted upon 

 this coupling or pairing off. 



He mentions (see Transactions of R.S.E., p. 563, 

 vol. xiv.), " a female adult salmon, weighing 12 Ibs., was 

 taken at the same time (5th January, 1839), from the 

 river, in the act of spawning, in absence of the male." 



This, in two respects, is, although in the form of a 

 fact, a curious and important admission, for it completely 

 disturbs the common notion, that the milter and spawner 

 require to act in concert, in order to express and pro- 

 perly amalgamate their sexual deposits a process I 

 have fifty 'times seen detailed by naturalists, and which, 

 although not for the purposes they assign, actually takes 

 place at a different stage or period, as I shall immediately 

 show ground for believing. Again, Mr Shaw, who, I 

 presume, knows well that this occurrence, namely, the 

 circumstance of a female performing its spawning func- 

 tions in absence of the male, is not at all an infrequent 

 one, plainly, by the introduction of the case above quoted, 

 holds the power of instinct at a discount ; for it is not 

 likely, allowing the salmon to be endowed even with the 

 smallest share of that natural faculty whatsoever, that 

 any individual of either sex would commence and carry 

 on an unassisted and imperfect process of generation, 

 ejecting, without provocative, but solely at its own will 

 and pleasure, barren inoperative spawn, ova, it may be or 

 milt, but whether milt or ova, alike fruitless, and unless 

 borne into accidental contact with some waif particles 

 of counteracting matter, prodigally squandered and 



