8930 Fishes. 
“ Their favourite food in the sea is the sand-eel.” Others confirm the 
latter statement, and add that within flood-mark some salmon have 
been taken with two and some with three full-sized herrings in their 
stomachs, 
In order to test the accuracy of the above conclusions with regard 
to the Tay, I examined the stomachs and intestines of upwards of a 
hundred salmon and grilse caught in the river from the commence- 
ment of the season in February to its ending in the September of this 
year. The salmon in its young condition feeds freely enough; for 
the stomachs and intestines of the parr from Stormontfield ponds are 
gorged to an extreme degree with beetles, flies, larva, larvee-tubes 
and minute Crustacea, while those of the smolts are also well filled. 
Indeed the voracity of young parr has cost them their lives in 
instances where they have been too freely fed with small flies. Such 
being the nature of the fish from its earliest age, one is sceptical at 
first sight in regard to the statement that the grilse and salmon do 
not feed in fresh water at all. Professor Owen observes that the 
salmon, in common with many other fishes, when hooked or netted, 
empties its stomach by an instinctive act of fear, or to facilitate escape 
by lightening its load; so that the stomach, thus cleared of its con- 
tents, exhibits subsequently, for reward to the investigator, only the 
tiny animalcules which, having been swallowed with more substantial 
fare, escaped ejection by lurking in the gastric mucus. Were such 
the case an explanation would be readily given to the fact that the 
stomach of a fish which possesses so powerful a circulatory apparatus, 
and whose mucular tissues undergo a continual waste, should thus 
frequently be found empty. But if the salmon so fared we should 
expect to find the intestines at least well filled with the débris of 
such food, since it cannot very easily vomit it after it has passed the 
pylorus ; and the very terror which impels it to disgorge in one case 
may entirely paralyse its efforts to do so in another. 
In its usual condition the stomach is coated internally with a con- 
sistent white mucus of great tenacity, well calculated to hold any 
“ animalcules” introduced from without; yet in few or none did such 
occur, cellulo-granular matter and oil-globules alone appearing. In 
ten instances only did remnants of fishes occur, and in all these 
nothing remained but vertebral columns, cranial and other bones, with 
the denser tissues, as the lens, &c. The number of bones in several 
cases showed that the animals had enjoyed a most ample repast, since 
they belonged to fishes from eight to ten inches in length, of what 
species I have not as yet been able to determine. Some pieces 
