CHAP. VII.] TIIE FOTJETH DAY. 181 



And as I have told you that Sir Francis Bacon observes, 

 the age of a salmon exceeds not ten years; so let me next 

 tell you, that his growth is very sudden : it is said, that, 

 after he is got into the sea, he becomes, from a samlet not 

 so big as a gudgeon, to be a salmon, in as short a time as a 

 gosling becomes to be a goose. Much of this, has been 

 observed ; by tying a ribband, or some known tape or thread, 

 in the tail of some young salmons, which have been taken 

 in weirs as they have swimmed towards the salt water ; and 

 then by taking a part of them, again with the known mark, 

 at the same place, at their return from the sea, which is 

 usually about six months 1 after; (and the like experiment 

 hath been tried upon young swallows ; who have, after six 

 months' absence,been observed to return to the same chimne} 7 , 

 there to make their nests and habitations for the summer 

 following :) which has inclined many to think, that every 

 salmon usually returns to the same river in which it was 

 bred ; 2 as young pigeons, taken out of the same dove-cote, 

 have also been observed to do. 



And you are yet to observe further, that the he-salmon is 

 usually bigger than the spawner ; and that he is more kipper, 

 arid less able to endure a winter in the fresh water than she 

 is : yet she is at that time of looking less kipper, and better 

 as watery, and as bad meat. 



And yet you are to observe, that as there is no general 



mentions one of seventy-four pounds, which was caught at loch Awe, hooked 

 oue day and not lauded till the next. We have heard that Professor Wilson 

 caught a salmon with a fly, in Scotland, which weighed sixty-four pounds. 

 But the largest on record came into the possession of Mr. Grove, fish- 

 monger, of Bond-street, in 1821. This weighed eighty-three pounds. 

 Salmon of great weight used formerly to be taken in the Thames ; but we 

 believe not for more than twenty years. Human ingenuity has of late years 

 come to the aid of Salmon in facilitating its passage over the steepest 

 falls. Mr. Smith, of Deanston, invented in 1840 an intersected stair-ladder 

 (figured in Mr. Yarrell's work), by which the fish can ascend any fall step 

 by step. And in the late Paris Exposition (1855) the model of one was 

 exhibited which had been used with much success in Ireland, and up which 

 even minnows had been seen to ascend. ED. 



1 On an average Salmon return to their native river within three 

 months, and frequently in two. ED. 



2 That this is undoubtedly the case, has been proved of late years, by the 

 practice of marking salmon and then turning them again into the river from 

 which they wei*e taken, and in which they have been found the following 

 year. ED. 



