NATUKAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 55 



It has also to be taken into account that, on the Tweed 

 and other rivers, a variety of experiments by cutting had 

 been going on for years, and that some of the fish 

 operated on elsewhere might have wandered into the 

 Tay. If cutting were to be relied upon at aU, it should 

 be not a mere slice, which the teeth of a seal or porpoise 

 may accidentally imitate with complete success, but 

 something peculiar, and, so to say, complicated and 

 inimitable, such as the perforations on railway-tickets 

 ( o 000 (^ ). While the evidence in favour of the ascent 

 being made in the same season as the descent is thus 

 wanting in positiveness, there is evidence very positive 

 in quality, though small in quantity, to the opposite 

 effect. Of all the smolts marked by the attachment of 

 rings or other effective means, whether in the Tay or 

 other rivers, none have been got, as either grUse or 

 salmon, the ji/rst year, and several have been got the 

 second year. Of the Stormontfield smolts of the second 

 year — descending in spring 1856 — 300 (in addition 

 to the 1135 which were cut) were marked by silver 

 rings ; and of these none were got. It is quite possible 

 indeed that all of the 300 that escaped their enemies in 

 the sea, or even, we will suppose, the entire 300, " no 

 wanderer lost," may have returned to the Tay as grilse 

 that season, and yet none of them have chanced to be 

 caught. But from other quarters we have what seems posi- 

 tive evidence in favour of the second season. In various 

 years a great number of Tweed smolts were marked by 

 a silver wire passed through and fastened to the back 

 part of their tails ; none of them were got as grilse or 

 salmon the season they were marked, but the next season 



