58 THE SALMON. 



But here we are brought up with a jerk, so to speak, 

 by the new and startling question, Is the grilse a grown 

 and transmuted salmon-smolt ; or, in other words, is a 

 grilse an adolescent salmon ? Till lately, there was no 

 question about it,^it was held that the smolt returned 

 as a grilse, and that the grilse was simply a virgin-salmon, 

 or a salmon on its first ascent. Lately, however, these 

 assumptions have been strongly assailed — first questioned 

 in a book, and then pronounced upon in an authoritative 

 way by a Committee of the Commissioners of the river 

 Tweed, who say, in their Eeport (1863), " Our opinion, 

 from the experience of the last twenty years, is, that grilses 

 never become salmon of any stage whatever." This is an 

 audacious and almost unheard-of heresy. It could scarcely 

 be said to have ventured into the light till a year or two 

 ago, when a Eoss-shire laird, a salmon controversiaHst 

 by hereditary descent, inflamed with what he thought a 

 great discovery, " came rushing from his mountain home," 

 and hurled a biggish book, charged with heretical matter, 

 among a generation aU sections of which had been 

 accustomed to accept the old orthodox doctrine as be- 

 yond doubt or question. 



Great was the astonishment, and just the indigna- 

 tion, of the baker's Avife in " Candide," on hearing that 

 there was a man down stairs who hesitated to declare 

 his belief in the fact of the Pope being Antichrist. But 

 what was that display of unbelief to some which we are 

 doomed to witness in this bold and sceptical age ? Here 

 was a man — a Man of Ross — who actually hesitated to 

 declare his belief in the popular and accepted fact of a 

 Grilse being a young Salmon. Nay, worse ; that luck- 



