PRACTICAL ESSAY. 205 



" 10. It appears certain, however, that smolts do not always 

 return during the same year as grilse, but frequently remain nine 

 or ten months in the sea, returning in the following spring as small- 

 sized salmon. 



" ii. It has also been clearly proved that, in general, salmon and 

 grilse find their way back to spawn to the rivers in which they were 

 bred sometimes to the identical spots ; spawn about November or 

 December, and go down again to the sea as ' spent fish,' or ' kelts,' 

 in February or March, returning, in at least many cases, during the 

 following four or five months as ' clean fish,' and with an increase in 

 weight of from seven to ten pounds. 



" NOTE. Shortly before spawning, and whilst returning to the 

 sea as kelts or spent fish, salmon are unfit for food, and their cap- 

 ture is then illegal. l Foul fish ' before spawning are, if males, 

 termed ' red fish,' from the orange-coloured stripes with which their 

 cheeks are marked, and the golden-orange tint of the body ; the 

 females are darker in colour, and are called 'black fish.' After 

 spawning, the males are called ' kippers,' and the females ' shedders,' 

 or * baggits.' " 



Such is a summary of the habits of the salmon, to which little can 

 be added in the space at my disposal. 



It is an interesting sight to watch the salmon ascending a weir, 

 as I have done scores of times. I lived for three years in a house 

 abutting on a salmon-leap, and my bed-room window commanded 

 an excellent and close view of a large weir, up which, at certain 

 times, the salmon used to pass. They do not, as the old story 

 goes, put their tails in their mouths and spring up by suddenly un- 

 bending, but, "taking a run," they scurry up the part over which 

 there is the deepest flow of water, hanging for an instant on the 

 edge, and then shoot away into the deep water above. 



Salmon lie in the pools at the foot of a rapid, often where the 

 current is strongest, lying under the lee of a submerged rock, and 

 in such places they should be fished for. The salmon-casts on 

 every river arc so well known to the local anglers, and are often in 

 apparently unlikely places, while as often the most likely pools 



