CH. IV. EXPERIMENTS RESPECTING SALMON. 53 



Mr. Young told me also that his young family of 

 salmon fry which he hatched and kept confined in 

 ponds connected with the river always become per- 

 fectly tame, and the moment that he steps on the 

 plank laid across the ponds for the purpose of feed- 

 ing the fish from, they all flock round him ready to 

 dart at the food he puts in. In some of the ponds 

 he had put a number of small eels, which soon grew 

 in size, and became as tame and familiar as the 

 young salmon. As the cold weather came on, the 

 eels all disappeared, and he supposed that they 

 had managed to escape, led by their instinct to 

 take refuge in some deeper pools. However, one 

 fine spring day, when he had long ceased to think of 

 his slimy pets, he happened to pass over one of the 

 planks, when he was delighted to see them all 

 issue out from under the stones asking for food, as 

 if a day only, instead of many weeks, had passed 

 since he last had fed them. Does not this most 

 clearly prove that eels lie dormant during cold 

 weather ? 



I asked Mr. Young if he could explain why at 

 the mouths of rivers, when angling, one always 

 catches such a variety of trout — a variety which 

 does not exist at some distance from the sea, each 

 and every stream having its own peculiar species. 

 His opinion, founded on practical experiment and 



