THE ATLANTIC SALMON 



SALMO SALAR 

 By the RIGHT HON. SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, BART. 



PROBABLY there is no animal of similar commercial importance 

 of which the life history has been so difficult to elucidate as the 

 salmon. Controversy has been waged about it without end, not 

 always in a philosophic spirit, and it is only in recent years, since 

 the scientific system of observation and marking instituted by 

 Mr Walter Archer, as Inspector of Scottish Salmon Fisheries, 

 has been carried forward by Mr Calderwood, Mr H. Johnston, Mr Malloch, 

 Dr Noel Paton, etc., in the north, and by Mr Hutton and other careful 

 investigators in England, that any considerable addition to knowledge has 

 been attained. Much of the ground formerly occupied by a rank growth of 

 random hypothesis and a priori argument has now been cleared; and 

 although a great deal of uncertainty upon important points still awaits 

 settlement, we have the satisfaction of feeling that research is being con- 

 ducted on right lines and sound principles. 



The chief hindrance to the investigation of salmon problems consists 

 in the fact that, although the salmon is a native of fresh water,* it passes 

 most of its life in the sea, where it is very difficult to follow its movements. 

 Nevertheless a great advance in this respect has been achieved as the result 

 of marking migrating smolts in the Tay, a process most successfully con- 

 ducted by Mr Calderwood and Mr Malloch in the spring of 1905 and fully 

 described in Mr Malloch's work on the life-history of the salmon, j Previous 

 to that undertaking, all that was known with certainty was that the process 

 of spawning went on in the late autumn and winter, that after the ova had 

 been deposited in the gravel of the river bed by the female and duly ferti- 

 lized by the male, a period of from ten to seventeen weeks, according to 

 temperature, elapsed before the tiny alevins made their escape from the 

 eggs. The experience gained in fish -hatcheries established the fact that, 

 after spending their first summier gregariously as fry, in the following 



•Like most other points in the life-history of salmon this has been matter of controversy. Mr W. L. Calderwood, 

 founding on the fact that the majority of Salmonidee are purely marine, and having regard to the ease with which the 

 common trout (_S. fario) endures a sojourn in salt water, considers that the salmon should be classed as a marine 

 species. On the other hand, seeing that this fish cannot perpetuate its species in the sea, salt water being fatal to the 

 vitality of the ova, that it repairs regularly to rivers in order to spawn, and that the first two or even three years of 

 its life are spent there, it is difficult to regard it otherwise than as a native of fresh water. 



^Life-History and Habits of the Salmon, etc., by P. D. Malloch. London: A. & C. Black, 1910. 



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