SALMON-SPEAKING. 219 



imagined that the cunning and rapacity of man seeks every 

 opportunity to intercept their progress. Nets of the most 

 various form and construction are employed for their capture 5 

 numbers are entrapped in enclosed spaces formed in weirs, into 

 which they enter as they push up the stream, and are then pre- 

 vented by a grating of a peculiar contrivance from returning or 

 getting out ; and many are speared, a mode frequently practised 

 at night-time, when torches are made use of to attract them to 

 the surface, or to betray them by their silvery reflection to the 

 attentive fisherman. 



The ruddy gleam illumining the river banks or sparkling in 

 the agitated waters, the black sky above, the deep contrasts of 

 light and shade, attach a romantic interest to this nocturnal 

 sport, which has been both practised and sung by Walter 

 Scott, 



" "lis blithe along the midnight tide 

 With stalwart arm the boat to guide, 

 On high the dazzling blaze to rear 

 And heedful plunge the barbed spear. 

 Rock, wood, and scour emerging bright, 

 Fling on the stream their ruddy light, 

 And from the bank our band appears 

 Like Genii armed with fiery spears." 



The natural history of the salmon was until lately but very 

 imperfectly known, as the parr (brandling, samlet) and the grilse, 

 which are now fully proved to be but intermediate stages of its 

 growth, were supposed by Yarrell to be distinct fishes. The first 

 person who seems to have suspected the true nature of the parr 

 was James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, who in his usual eccen- 

 tric way took some pains to verify his opinion. As an angler, he 

 had often caught the parr in its transition state, and had fre- 

 quently captured smolts (at that time the only acknowledged 

 youthful salmon) with the scales barely covering the bars or 

 finger marks of the parr. Wondering at this, he marked a great 

 number of the lesser fish and offered rewards of whisky (being 

 himself a great admirer of the genuine mountain-dew) to the 

 peasantry to bring him any fish that had evidently undergone 

 the change. These crude experiments of the talented shepherd 

 convinced him that the parr were the young of the salmon in 

 the first stage, and since then professed naturalists have fully 

 settled the question by watching the egg into life, and tracing 



