2662 Fishes. 



' finnock ' * (the Salmo albus of Fleming) was pertinaciously upheld 

 to be a distinct species which never attained to a larger size ; and, 

 about a dozen of years ago or more, it was customary at Banff to fish, 

 with small-meshed nets, for finnocks and yellow trout, and to sell 

 them at a penny or two pence the pound. The assertion that they 

 were thus throwing away, in an early stage of its existence, one of 

 the most coveted and valuable productions of the river, the salmon or 

 sea trout (Salmo Trutta), — regarded by some as more delicate even 

 than the salmon itself, — would have been answered only by an incre- 

 dulous, and, it might be, a contemptuous smile. The conclusive ex- 

 periments of Mr. Shaw, however, produced in course of time their 

 proper effect upon the public mind; and the tacksman, uninfluenced 

 by the opinions of his fishermen, gave orders at last that no finnocks 

 should in future either be caught or sold. 



It is believed that the peculiar character of the bed of a river, and 

 also of the region through which the river flows, is not without a very 

 material influence on the salmon by which it is inhabited. It has 

 been even proved, and that in the clearest manner, that the particular 

 periods at which the salmon go down to, and return from, the sea, are 

 dependent greatly upon the warmth of the water in which they have 

 been bred. These periods are decidedly different in different rivers; 

 those in which the bottom or bed is of a rocky — and consequently a 

 warm — character being the earliest, and those where the bottom is 

 muddy and comparatively cold being the latest. Between the run, as 

 it is called, of the salmon in one river and that in another, a very con- 

 siderable period may thus intervene. It would, on this account, ap- 

 pear to be a dictate of common sense, that the salmon fishery in 

 Scotland should neither commence, in all the rivers, on one and the 

 same day, nor come to a close in a similar manner : each river should 

 have a time peculiar to itself. At the same time, it is but fair that 

 what is called the close season should be of uniform extent in every 

 part of the country. Would it not, therefore, be an improvement on 

 the present state of the law, as it regards the important subject of the 



* In Part I. of the magnificent ' Illustrations of the British Salmonidae,' by Sir 

 William Jardine, there is a highly-finished and coloured representation, as large as 

 life, of the finnock, or Salmo albus, which at that time — about 1838 — was considered 

 to be a distinct species. Had it continued to be so regarded, albus as a specific term 

 would have been anything but appropriate, inasmuch as it is not nearly so white as 

 the Salmo Salar, and some others of the genus. On the Solway it is called the 

 ' herling.' 



