SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 33 



have been struck with the systematic order and regularity 

 with which their migratory flight was conducted. In Macgill's 

 Travels in Twrkey, it is remarked, respecting the migrations 

 of the stork, — 



" These birds pay an annual visit to Turkey. They arrive in vast 

 numbers, and always in the night. They arrange their progress 

 very systematically. They send forward their scouts, who always 

 make their appearance a day or two before the grand army, and 

 then return to give in their report ; after which the whole body 

 advances, and in its passage leaves, during the night, detachments 

 in the different towns and villages on their way.* Early in October 

 they take their departure in the same manner, so that no man can 

 tell from whence they come, or whither they go. A person who, at 

 the season of their departure, was in the habit of coming from the 

 interior, told me, that on his journey the year preceding, he had 

 seen thousands, and hundreds of thousands, of them near the bank 

 of a river, and that they annually assemble there ; and when the 

 general sees that his whole army is collected, he, at a given moment, 

 sets it ia motion, leaving a detachment to bring up the stragglers." 



The migratory systerrb seems, therefore, to be regulated by 

 the same general laws in all parts. That salmon and herrings 

 perform their migrations in masses is indisputable ; that they 

 do so annually is equally so ; and that they migrate to distant 

 parts we think must be evident from the facts we have stated. 

 The very circumstance of their migrations being performed in 

 shoals, or masses, would, alone, afford a strong presumption 

 that they proceed to distant parts, from whence their return 

 could obviously not be so well or so regularly made singly as 

 in masses. Common fishes, which swim about our shores in 

 search of food, do not require to form themselves into gregarious 

 tribes or shoals : to them the gregarious instinct would be worse 

 than useless — ^it would be an impediment ; but to fishes which 

 have to proceed to distant regions, and to return periodically 

 at stated times, it seems absolutely necessarj'', to enable them to 

 perform their migrations, and, therefore, Nature has implanted 

 this instinct in them. Undoubtedly the great Being, by whom 



These detachments break off from the main body just as those of sahnon 

 and herrings do, each detachment of storks stopping at the place of its nativity, 

 like those of the above fishes. The analogies of the system are obvious. 



C 



