NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 43 



measures feet. But one part, at least, of the apparent 

 anomaly is on all hands admitted to be fact — every 

 observant angler knows, and the chief challengers of Mr. 

 Shaw's conclusion do not deny, that male parrs do and 

 that female parrs do not attain to sexual maturity. This 

 being got over, there is little difficulty in believing what, 

 remains — on the contrary, the sexual maturity of the 

 young male must be regarded as conferred by nature for 

 a purpose and not as a freak. . That purpose Mr. Shaw 

 maintaiaed to be the impregnation of the roe of the 

 female salmon, and he maintained it, not because he had 

 dreamed or preconceived it, but because, when looking 

 for something else, he had seen it. And often since his 

 time, what he saw doing in the river, and what he after- 

 wards did in his preserves, has been done with unques- 

 tioned results in the experimental streams and ponds — 

 the roe of the adult female salmon, suflPused with the 

 milt of the male parr, generated, just as if suffused with 

 the milt of the male adult salmon ; and the roe of female 

 salmon, suffused with the milt of any other fish, or left 

 unsuffused as it came from the female, did not generate 

 — so that there is both proof positive and proof negative. 



Coming to the more important and more controverted 

 question, whether the parr migrates at the beginning of 

 its second or of its third year, the apparent anomaly of 

 the theory that it does hot descend either in the first 

 migratory season after its birth nor in the next again, is 

 in great part, if not entirely removed by a more or less 

 fatal admission of those by whom the theory is disputed. 

 Formerly, a pretty prevalent creed was that the parr 



