FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 



season. He entertained no doubt that, although these salmon were not 

 kelts, they had been in the fresh water for some months, and had returned 

 to the sea without spawning. 



I was too late that season to obtain more than a single specimen — a male, 

 which I sent on August 25 to the Research Laboratory of the Royal College 

 of Physicians of Edinburgh, where investigations into the life-history of 

 salmon had been carried on for several years. The Committee sent me the 

 following note upon the autopsy; "Total weight, 3,129 grms; ovaries, 

 67 grms; length, 73 cm.; girth, 31 cm,; depth, 12 cm. No sea -lice, no 

 parasites on gills; stomach and intestines containing yellow mucus; 

 pyloric appendages, very little fat; gall bladder empty, muscle rich 

 colour." 



The following summer, 1901, was unusually dry; there was no spate 

 in the Cree between the first week in June and the very end of August; 

 nevertheless, early in August Mr Birrell supplied me with two or three 

 of these dark fish, which I forwarded to the laboratory. Unfortunately, I 

 have never received a report upon them; and I have not had an opportunity 

 of continuing the observation, because our lease of the river was voided 

 by a judgment of the Courts on the death of the lessor, when only three of 

 the term of twenty-one years had expired. But during those three years 

 I saw and heard enough to convince me that what has been termed to-and- 

 fro migration of salmon is a well-established movement. 



Moreover, it is a voluntary movement. Even if it were possible that sal- 

 mon could be washed out of a river by summer floods, there had been no 

 flood to disturb the dark fish taken in the sea in August, 1901. It is con- 

 ceivable, though improbable, that salmon could be washed out of a rapid, 

 rough Highland river like the Shin or Helmsdale (in both of which a sea- 

 ward movement of salmon in July and August is a regular phenomenon), 

 for these rivers have no estuary, the Shin discharging into the Kyle of 

 Sutherland and the Helmsdale into the open German Ocean. In the Cree, 

 however, such an explanation of the descent of spring and summer 

 salmon is out of the question, for between the angling water and 

 the sea nets at Creetown, where these fish were taken, the river has 

 to traverse, first the Loch of Cree, a canal -like stretch about three 

 miles in length, and next a winding, muddy estuary eight or nine miles 

 long. It is physically impossible that salmon could be washed out of 

 this river against their will ; their descent must have been deliberate and 

 voluntary. 

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