Vlll PREFACE. 



pendix, extracted from Ephemera's " Homilies 

 and Lectures on Salmon and Rivers ; " and as 

 Ephemera is a gentleman who has long studied, 

 travelled by the river sides, and examined both 

 salmon fry and spawn, his views on all their 

 habits will be found perfectly correct. He is none 

 of those theorists who, by taking wide departures 

 from nature, land an audience in mist and 

 themselves in an absurdity. He has studied na- 

 ture, and has given it the very same as he has 

 found it. 



I have described the ova in the various stages 

 throughout incubation, the progress it made from 

 time to time, and the appearance the young fish 

 had, and how they lie in the egg, the appearance 

 and size they have at hatching-time, and also the 

 changes and sizes of the fry from the egg to the 

 smolt that is, when a coating of small silver- 

 looking scales covers all their dark-looking sides 

 and bars that distinguished them from the age of 

 two months until now. Also, that, at this age 

 and change, the young salmon, no longer known 

 by the name of salmon fry, are now known as 

 smolts, they being now twelve months old, and at 

 the age and time that nature tells them they have 

 to emigrate to some other locality ; therefore they 

 gather together in bands, and leave the water in 



