204 ON THE BREEDING OF SALMON. 



season, still, the impregnation of the roe of a fifteen 

 pound baggit salmon, by a two ounce parr of her last 

 year's spawn, is too great a stretch for a vulgar fisher- 

 man's comprehension or credulity, however many 

 'learned Thebans' may believe it. May we not, with 

 more probability, imagine, that the roe of the baggit 

 salmon which Mr. Shaw spawned by compression, and 

 at the same time brought in contact with the milt of the 

 small male parr, and thereby supposed to have impreg- 

 nated the female's spawn as emitted is it not as pro- 

 bable that, at least, a quantity of the spawn would have 

 produced the young as well without as with contact 

 with the puny parr? I am of opinion that it would, 

 believing that the female salmon had already been 

 impregnated by previous connection with a mature male; 

 though the period and manner of such connection have 

 not been perceived, and are therefore unknown to us." 



Again, as regards the organs of generation in the 

 male fish, Mr. Younger justly observes : 



"If we have no proper idea of the purpose of the 

 large pike or kip, like a finger, growing in projection 

 from the under snout of the male salmon just previous 

 to the spawning season, and fitting into a hole of proper 

 dimensions on the upper chap of the snout, and this 

 pike falling so suddenly and entirely off, and its case 

 also filling up immediately after spawning, need we 

 wonder that the still more complex construction of the 

 organs of generation and of the manner of their use, 

 should, to this day, be unascertained ? " 



In the discussion of this question, I might, had I 

 thought proper, have availed myself of an anecdote 

 introduced into a small volume published by Pickering, 

 and entitled " Piscatorial Reminiscences/' &c., which 

 relates the circumstance of the ova having been taken 



