NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 35 



of skegger ; when in the East they avow him penk ; but 

 to northward, brood and locksper ; so from thence to a 

 tecon ; then to a salmon." About the same period, 

 Izaak Walton enumerates the names of samlet, skegger, 

 and tecon as names of the young of the salmon, im- 

 agining them, however, to be the young of three different 

 species of salmon ; and he tells us that he knew (by 

 hearsay) of experiments on this point made before his 

 day, not dissimilar in mode, object, and results to some 

 that have been made in our own. Thus : " It is said, 

 that after he is got into the sea, he becomes from a sam- 

 i let, not so big as a gudgeon, to be a salmon, in so short 

 s a time as a gosling becomes to be a goose. Much of 

 i this has been observed by tying a ribbon or some known 

 ! tape or thread in the tail of some young salmons which 

 fe have been taken in weirs as they have swimmed towards 

 £ the salt water, and then by taking a part of them again 

 ii with the known mark at the sam§ place at their re- 

 iii turn from the sea, which is usually about six months 

 f after." Again, a hundred years later, we have Captain 

 'I Burt (an English engineer officer, who resided in the 

 g Highlands between the two Jacobite Eebellions, and 

 (I wrote a book still of great value and interest), when 

 £ referring to the river Ness, speaking thus: — "There is 

 1(1 great plenty of a small fish the people call a little trout, 

 ,|ibut of another species, and is exceeding good, called in 

 ,jijithe north of England a branlin. Then they are so like 

 jgithe salmon frye, that they are hardly to be distinguished, 

 jfonly the skals come off the frye in handling, the others 

 jjhave none." Burt failed to see that the branlin and the 

 lU " frye" are the same fish in different stages, and to note 



