120 THE COMPLETE ANGLEE. 



of its existence in it, and two-thirds, at least, of its after-life, or eight 

 months out of every twelve. It migrates to sea annually, making its 

 first voyage at the age of twelve months or thereahouts, never before, but 

 sometimes a little later, and repeating it every year, and in some rare 

 instances, twice a-year, as long as it lives. It invariably returns life 

 permitting to breed in the rivers in which it has been bred. Take a 

 salmon bred in the Shin, in Sutherlandshire, and set it at liberty in the 

 Tweed, at Berwick, and it will not ascend the Tweed, but will, if not 

 slain in transitu, return to its native river, the Shin, traversing hundreds 

 of miles of ocean to do so. Is this wonderful ? Not more wonderful 

 than, 



" The swallow twittering from its straw-built shed," 



migrating, on the first appearance of winter on these shores, to the 

 warm atmosphere, yielding insect food, of Africa, and returning to its 

 natal locality in the spring, to live and give life in the temperate summer 

 of a temperate zone. The annual emigrations of fish and fowl are caused 

 by natural wants, but the instinct, " true as the needle to the pole," that 

 guides them, undeviatingly, in their long out and return voyages, through 

 the stormy air and through the tempest-tossed seas, is wonderful unto 

 adoration of the Providence that hath implanted it in these animals of 

 its creation. I will here give a happy illustration of the invari- 

 able habit of salmon returning to the rivers in which they first saw life. 

 It is taken from my "Book of the Salmon," p. 172 : " Loch-shin, a piece 

 of water about 20 miles by 14, situate in the heart of the Sutherland- 

 shire mountains, is the immediate feeder of the river Shin, noted for the 

 abundance of its salmon. The Loch itself has four feeders, middling- 

 sized rivers, viz., the Terry, Fiack, Garvy, and Curvy, in which, pre- 

 viously to the year 1836, not a salmon was ever seen, though many were 

 in the habit of entering the loch or lake. In the year mentioned, at the 

 request of his Grace of Sutherland, and Mr. Loch, M.P., salmon were 

 caught in the river Shin, shortly before the spawning season, and con- 

 veyed to the four rivers above named, amongst which they were distri- 

 buted in due proportion. Mr. Andrew Young, the Duke's salmon-factor, 

 and our best natural historian of salmon, was the managing director on 

 the occasion. In the winter season all the fish spawned, each in the 

 river into which it was put. Now, mark one of the consequences : salmon 

 at present, and ever since, come regularly to spawn, traversing the lake, 

 &c., to do so, in all those heretofore salmonless rivers. Nay, more, the 

 fish hatched in the Terry, at least those that survive long enough, 

 return to the Terry; and the young of the other three rivers return from 

 the sea to them, each grilse or salmon entering never-failingly the 

 actual stream that gave it birth. What wonderful and unerring in- 

 stinct ! One might think that they would remain in the river Shin, 

 and spawn where their first ancestors had spawned ; but no, they leave 

 their own natal shallows, pass down the lake, through the river Shin, 

 along the Kyle of Sutherland, to the sea; and there having become 

 adolescent, in three months or so, they retrace their route, and, after 

 necessary rests on their long voyage, very frequently in the spots of 



