Anniversary Address. 43 



With respect to the salmon fry they are brought down the 

 river Tweed in such myriads in the spring of the year, that 

 Berwick Bay is full of them. Ducks, Gulls, and all the 

 aquatic birds are found in vast numbers, feeding upon them, 

 and they are the prey of all the finny tribe. It is matter of 

 surprise to me when so many escape the poacher in the breed- 

 ing season, that so few return to their own river. Mr. William 

 Paulin, the experienced manager of the Berwick Company's 

 Fisheries, in the Tweed, and who has all his life paid great 

 attention to the habits of the salmon, writes to me as follows : — 



" In answer to your enquiry about the salmon fry, I may 

 inform you that their migrating period is from about the 

 middle of April to the end of May, during which they come 

 down the river in immense shoals, but after they got into the 

 sea their history is not so well ascertained. Some contend 

 that in the sea they grew very rapidly, and in a few weeks 

 return to the river as grilses, of five or six pounds weight. I 

 don't believe this, for from experiments that have been made, 

 I am satisfied that they do not return as grilses of the above 

 weight until at least fifteen months after ; but where they go 

 in the meantime there is no satisfactory evidence to shew, ex- 

 cept that they must be somewhere in the deep sea, for they 

 are never found in the river again, or on the sea shore, until 

 they appear as grilses. One thing also is certain that a con- 

 siderable portion of the smolts, on their first entrance into the 

 sea, must become the prey of codfish and other sea-fishes, as 

 well as of birds, which are all found in great numbers about 

 the river mouth at that period of the year, just waiting to 

 devour them." 



In a second letter he says, " The most destructive enemies 

 of the fry when it leaves the river, are the ' Podlers' or 'Saiths,' 

 and the ' Sea Gulls or ' Divers,' but the former are by far the 

 most numerous, and are exceedingly voracious. Last week a 

 few of our fishermen, with a common salmon net, caught up- 

 wards of 300 of these fish in one haul ; and on two or three 

 other occasions they have caught large numbers of them, 

 amounting in the whole, I believe, to about 2000. Such of 

 them as were cut up were found to have from six to fifteen 



