HAVOCK AMONG THE SALMON SMOLTS. 299 



landed, the remains of one or more smolts. These fre- 

 quently were quite entire to all appearance, indeed, 

 newly killed; they were sometimes also in a partly- 

 digested state, and on other occasions presented to the 

 eye little more than was sufficient to distinguish them 

 as having been small fish. I have taken five or six 

 salmon-fry, in the stages above described, out of the 

 stomach of a single pike. Two, three, or four, are a 

 matter of common occurrence. Such being the case, 

 and if it be true, what many ichthyologists affirm, that 

 fish dissolve their food with such astonishing rapidity as 

 to rival, in some instances, the action of fire; nay, 

 allowing that the stomach of the pike occupied a 

 couple of hours in completing the digestive process, the 

 amount of havoc committed by this ravager on Teviot, 

 during the smolt season, is quite astonishing. Con- 

 fining my calculation within very moderate bounds, 

 I shall presume that each pike, on the average, as his 

 daily meal, during the months already referred to, en- 

 grosses four salmon or bull-trout fry. This, in the 

 course of sixty days, gives an allowance to every indivi- 

 dual in Teviot of two hundred and forty smolts : and 

 supposing there are from Ancrum-bridge downward, a 

 stretch of water nine or ten miles in length, not more 

 than one thousand pike, the entire number consumed by 

 these, in less than one-sixth of the year, amounts to two 

 hundred and forty thousand, or nearly a quarter of a 

 million of salmon-fry a greater number, there is no 

 question, than is killed during the same extent of time 

 by all the angling poachers in the district put together. 

 This work of devastation among the smolts is the more 

 to be regretted, seeing that there is not only no likeli- 

 hood of its being brought to an end, but, on the con- 

 trary, from what I have observed, there is every chance 



