112 MARKETABLE BRITISH MARINE FISHES chap. 



the most part one-year-old fish of the same species as the 

 pilchard. 



There is reason to beheve that many fish, chiefly those which 

 live near shore in shallow water, do not grow much in the coldest 

 season of winter, but exact observations on this question have 

 not been made. The conclusions above indicated concerning 

 sea-fishes agree closely with those reached long before by 

 observations and experiments on the salmon. The young salmon 

 remain in rivers the first year of their life as parr. At the second 

 spring when one year old some of them become silvery and 

 descend to the sea as smolts, returning the next autumn as grilse 

 which spawn. These grilse are therefore nearly two years old, but 

 many parr do not become smolts till they are two years old, and 

 therefore do not spawn until the third season after they were 

 hatched. 



Migrations. — The next points of interest concerning young fish 

 are the character of the localities in which they are found, their 

 distribution, as it is called, and their movements. The young of 

 certain kinds are found chiefly at the mouths of estuaries and 

 in very shallow water from the edge of the shore to ten fathoms. 

 The plaice is the most important of these. The young plaice 

 almost as soon as they have finished their transformation seek 

 the shore and the shallows, and in many places, where the shore 

 is flat and sandy, they are found in multitudes. Young flounders 

 also seek the shore, but are usually found in greater numbers in 

 the higher parts of estuaries than on the shore of the open sea. 

 Common dabs are found with the young plaice, and also soles, 

 turbot, and brill. Of round fishes the two kinds most abundant 

 in the shallows are cod and whiting, especially the latter. Large 

 numbers of all these kinds are taken in the nets employed for 

 the capture of shrimps. At Cleethorpes, at the mouth of the 

 Humber, shove-nets worked by hand by fishermen wading in the 

 water at low tide are used in shrimping. In these nets at the 

 end of April hundreds of small plaice, from li to 2| inches long, 

 are taken at one ebb-tide, and, considering what has been shown 

 by experiment to be the growth of the flounder, it is impossible 

 to doubt that these fish are the earliest young brood of the 

 season, hatched the previous January. Plaice of similar size are 

 also taken in June, and even later, but they become less numerous 

 towards the end of summer. Older fish, those of previous 



