CH. IV. EXPERIMENTS RESPECTING SALMON. 53 



Mr. Young told me also that his young family 

 of salmon fry which he hatched and kept confined 

 in ponds connected with the river always become 

 perfectly tame, and the moment that he steps on 

 the plank laid across the ponds for the purpose 

 of feeding the fish from, they all flock round him 

 ready to dart at the food he puts in. In some of 

 the ponds he had put a number of small eels, 

 which soon grew in size and became as tame and 

 familiar as the young salmon. As the cold weather 

 came on the eels all disappeared, and he supposed 

 that they had managed to escape, led by their 

 instinct to take refuge in some deeper pools. How- 

 ever, one fine spring day, when he had long ceased 

 to think of his slimy pets, he happened to pass 

 over one of the planks, when he was delighted to 

 see them all issue out from under the stones ask- 

 ing for food, as if a day only, instead of many 

 weeks, had passed since he last had fed them. 

 Does not this most clearly prove that eels lie dor- 

 mant during cold weather ? 



I asked Mr. Young if he could explain why at 

 the mouths of rivers, when angling, one always 

 catches such a variety of trout — a variety which 

 does not exist at some distance from the sea, each 

 and every stream having its own peculiar species. 

 His opinion, founded on practical experiment and 



