82 FISH AND FISHING- IN SCOTLAND. 



all the theories. On the Annan, the fishermen universally enter- 

 tain this idea: it had prevailed for at least a hundred years. 

 They did not seem to be aware that any other theory had ever 

 been proposed. Mr. Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, as he was 

 called, made experiments to prove the theory, which by many 

 were deemed satisfactory. 



As early, however, as 1794, Mr. Hutchinson, of Carlisle, object- 

 ing to this view, endeavoured to prove the parr to be a species of 

 fish distinct from all others. He failed to convince anyone ; 

 and for this simple reason : he never could find a female parr 

 with the roe developed; that is, a female parr, preparing to 

 deposit those ova on which must depend the perpetuity of 

 the race. Without this proof, the natural history of the parr 

 cannot be said to exist. 



Mr. Hutchinson was the first to observe (1794), without 

 comprehending the meaning of what the transcendental anatomy 

 can alone explain, that " if from off the sides of a true salmon- 

 fry, or smolt, the silvery scales be carefully scraped, the young 

 fish will show all the parr markings concealed by these scales ;" 

 and besides these so-called parr-spots or bars, there will then 

 appear the dark-coloured spots peculiar to some trout, and the 

 red-coloured spots peculiar to others. From these observations, 

 implying much quickness of observation, Mr. Hutchinson drew at 

 least no false conclusions ; but this was afterwards done ; and 

 the Keith Medal was bestowed by the Royal Society of Edin- 

 burgh, on the writer of a memoir in which we find " the generic 

 characters of the embryo salmon" mistaken for specific; the 

 parr declared to be a salmon, because it has some of the 

 characters of the salmon smolt ; and the salmon declared to be 

 in its younger days a parr, because, in its development from the 

 egg to the smolt, it displays, with all other animals, those 

 embryo forms connecting it not merely with the natural family 

 of the salmonidse, but with the zoological, and, more especially, 

 the ichthyological world, past, present, and to come. 



We have seen that the objection taken by M. Valenciennes 

 to the theory I now speak of, rested mainly on the dentition of 

 the parr. He thinks that natural history characters can with 

 propriety be taken only from the adult individual of each 



