38 THE SALMON. 



existing among those who, whether from a popular or a 

 scientific point of view, have debated this question, to 

 find that the denial of the parr being the young of the 

 salmon was maintained for so many years in the face of 

 these among other facts — that where there are no salmon 

 there are no parr, and vice versa ; that where the salmon 

 are artificially debarred from a river which they have 

 been accustomed to ascend, the parr disappear along 

 with them ; that the young of the salmon at the time 

 when they are the size of parr, are otherwise unaccounted 

 for ; and that parr, besides not growing as parr, are 

 never seen to breed, nor are found with developed roe. 

 We defy any man to find a parr in a river to which 

 salmon have not access, or a salmon in a river where 

 there are no parrs ; and we could, of our own knowledge, 

 name a score of waters where parrs abound up to some 

 obstruction, natural or artificial, impassable by salmon, 

 and are quite unknown above it ; and also several where 

 parrs used to be plentiful, but where, since the con- 

 struction of insurmountable dams, .they have disappeared. 

 All this is notorious, and was known as a popular and 

 established fact even to Izaak Walton, who, though he 

 knew little about salmon, knew that he had never met 

 with parrs save in salmon-rivers. The fact at least 

 proves, that in some way a communication with the sea 

 is necessary to the existence of the parr ; and, if it is a 

 distinct species, how comes it that no one ever saw, or 

 ever said he saw, parrs, as parrs, emigrating or immi- 

 grating ? But Mr. Young of Invershin, Sutherland- 

 shire (who has some disciples) seems to attempt to stifle 

 this difiiculty by speaking of the parr as a " river-trout," 



