THEOEIES OP THE PARE. 81 



of Guisborough, abundance of sea trout of the largest size frequent 

 at the "due season of the year," but no parr are ever found; 

 but common trout reside permanently in the stream ; and this 

 leads me to the conclusion: 1st, that as sea trout may frequent 

 streams in which the parr is not to be found, the common parr 

 cannot then belong to the sea trout ; and 2ndly, were the parr a 

 hybrid between the sea trout and the common river trout fre- 

 quenting these streams, we should again have had the parr. 



Thus we endeavour to narrow the curious and obscure question 

 of the origin of the parr, the most abundant of all our fresh- water 

 fishes of the trout kind ; of all, the least understood. 



I revert to my first statement. Parr are found only in rivers 

 frequented by salmon, but not in all rivers frequented by the king 

 of fishes. Parr are not found in the Kale, in Roxburghshire, nor 

 in the Tyne, in Haddingtonshire. This I know has been denied, 

 but I am too sure of my facts to doubt them. 



My esteemed friend, Mr. Young, of Invershin, informs me by 

 letter, that " parr are found in certain streams into which neither 

 salmon nor salmon trout ever penetrated." Notwithstanding 

 so high authority the best, I believe I must venture still to 

 doubt .The parr he means must be the parr-trout, which I have 

 often seen mistaken for parr by good and experienced anglers. It 

 seems to me that Nature herself has settled this part of the ques- 

 tion by an experiment she has made on a great scale ; the river 

 Clyde is the seat of the experiment. Below the falls of Stone 

 Byres, parr abound in incredible numbers, at least in autumn ; 

 above the falls trace the river to its source, you never will take a 

 single parr. It is the same, I believe, everywhere else ; interrupt 

 the course of the salmon, and with it the parr disappears. 



The theories offered to explain the natural history of the parr 

 are the necessary results of our ignorance of the habits of the 

 parr ; for were these known, no theory need be offered. In the 

 absence of a knowledge of the facts, it has been conjectured: 1st, 

 that the parr is simply the young of the salmon and of the salmon- 

 trout. But the streams of Guisborough disprove this idea as 

 regards the salmon-trout, and so there need 110 more be said 

 about it. 



That the parr is the young of the true salmon, is the oldest of 



G 



