THE PAR. 89 



to remark this through the experiments of a Clyde angler 

 we met with during a ramble some summers ago, who 

 cut up in our presence several par, and pointed out the 

 various distinctions betwixt the male and female fish. 

 He likewise assured us of a fact, which during the ex- 

 perience of thirty years he had carefully noted, but 

 whether worthy of credit or not, we ourselves are un- 

 able to decide, namely, that the par in Clyde every 

 fifth year are both fewer and much larger than they 

 are in the other four : if the case, this proves nothing ; 

 but still it is singular, and no doubt every angler must 

 have observed in most rivers, that one season often 

 presents him with different sized fish from those of 

 another, and that they are few or numerous according 

 to their size. 



But leaving the mulists as sufficiently handled, we 

 proceed to the opinion held by some, and by the author 

 of an article in the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia that par 

 are the males of the sea trout, w hiding, or finnock. 

 This theory is at once overturned by the well-known 

 fact, that these fish have the tail straight, or nearly 

 so, while the par and salmon have theirs fully and 

 beautifully forked. But supposing, as we grant is pos- 

 sible, that the growth of the fish changed in some mea- 

 sure the appearance of that appendage, still we are by 

 no means at a loss for another argument, to be taken 

 from open and conclusive facts, which readily expose 

 the error of this opinion. 



In the Rochil, a respectable stream, which joins the 

 Earn, opposite to Comrie, in Perthshire, there are few 

 par, except in the lowermost parts, where they are 

 pretty abundant during the summer months. Two or 

 three miles up, above a point where salmon generally 

 halt, owing both to the uncertainty of the floods, and 

 likewise to the interruption of a small but ill-assorted 



