APPENDIX. 87 



SCRAPS FROM THE REV. DUGALD WILLIAMSON'S 

 PAMPHLET. 



" Salmon migrate twice in the course of the year, and 

 the instinct which propels them from the sea in summer 

 propels them to the sea in spring. Let the vernal di- 

 rection of the propensity be opposed, let a salmon be 

 seized as it descends and confined in a fresh-water pond or 

 lake, and what is its fate ? Before preparing to quit the 

 river it had suffered severely in strength, bulk, and general 

 health, and imprisoned in an atmosphere which had be- 

 come unwholesome, it soon begins to languish, and in 

 the course of the season expires ; the experiment has been 

 tried, and the result is well known. This being an ascer- 

 tained and unquestionable fact, is it a violent or unfair 

 inference that a similar result obtains in the case of those 

 salmon that are forced back, from whatever cause, to the 

 sea ; that the salt-water element is as fatal to the pregnant 

 fish of autumn as the fresh water element is to the spent 

 fish in spring ; that, returning to an abode which their 

 instinct had taught them to abhor and prompted them to 

 fly from, they soon experience the bad effects of the anti- 

 natural compulsion ; that if sexual cohabitation takes 

 place at all, it is joyless and barren ; that the languor and 

 exhaustion which, under the most favourable circumstances, 

 follow the great efforts of nature, become immeasurably 

 more oppressive by exile ; and that all these unfortunates 

 are sooner or later destroyed, either by disease or by the 

 voracity of their neighbours. If there is any truth in 

 these conjectures, they suggest the most powerful reasons 

 for resisting or removing obstructions in the estuary of a 

 river." 



EXTRACTS FROM EPHEMERA'S HOMILIES. 



" A fish that is bred in a river, and breeds in it, and 

 passes about three-fourths of its existence in it, must be 

 considered a river fish. Its migration to sea is no more 

 a proof that it is a sea fish than the woodcock's migration 

 to Africa from Northern Europe is a proof that that bird 

 is a native of Egypt, Algeria, or Morocco; it simply 

 shows that the salmon is a migratory fish. Not only do 

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