THE SALMON 49 



which attained a length of from four to seven inches 

 by the months of March or April. They then, in a 

 ilooded state of the waters, made their way down to 

 the sea, and in the months of June, July, and August 

 returned again to their native streams, increased by a 

 very rapid growth, and the fattening powers of the salt 

 water, to a weight varying from two to six or seven 

 pounds. 



Everyone who has angled in a river where salmon 

 frequent in any considerable nimibers, knows that in 

 the spring months — that is, in March, April, and part of 

 May — he meets with immense swarms of smelts, or 

 smolts, or parr, that these take the artificial fly most 

 greedily, and that they afterwards seem to disappear, 

 or, at least, are but comparatively seldom met with in 

 fishing the streams. The law forbids the taking of 

 these small fry, but as far as our experience has gone, 

 we have seldom seen this enactment obeyed to any 

 extent, even by the most scrupulous and high-minded 

 anglers. With the mass of fishermen, the maxim, 

 unhappily, holds good almost everywhere, that " all are 

 fish that come into the net." To justify the infraction 

 of this law, it has been often contended that the parr, 

 or smolt, was a minute but distinct species of the 

 salmonidce, and that its capture was both fair and 

 reasonable. 



This matter was examined into. It was affirmed 

 that these swarms of small fish were nothing more nor 

 less than the salmon itself in the infant stage of its 

 being. Mr. Shaw, manager of the Duke of Buccleuch's 

 salmon-fisheries in Scotland, instituted, a short time 

 back, experiments on the subject upon an extensive 

 scale. This gentleman asserts, that what is commonly 

 called the parr is the salmon-fry in the first stage of 

 their development; that in this state, as parr, they 

 remain in the river in which they were brought forth 

 for one whole year ; that in the second year their outer 

 covering of scales is moulted off, as it were, and they 

 then assume the character of graveling or smolts, 

 which was formerly supposed to be the first stage of 



