16 



then called parrs. We will now briefly quote the words 

 of another,* showring the growth, and giving the names that 

 the salmon bear in the different stage of their existence. 

 After the umbilical sac is absorbed, he says : "It is then a 

 salmon fry, and so continues to its twelfth month, when it 

 becomes a smolt with silvery coat, its length five inches or 

 so, and its weight two or three ounces. It then migrates to 

 salt water, feeds therein, and in the course of three or four 

 months becomes & grilse, or maiden salmon, weighing not un- 

 frequently eight pounds (rapidity of growth most marvelous 

 and almost incredible !) In this grilse state it returns to its 

 native river, spawns in due season upon its fords, and not 

 long afterward migrates for the second time to the sea. 

 Having fed there for two or three months it becomes an adult 

 salmon weighing twelve, fourteen or sixteen pounds. It 

 again returns to its native river, deposits in the spawning 

 beds some ten thousand to fifteen thousand ova, which are 

 impregnated by the male, and give life in all probability to 

 seven or eight thousand salmon. Salmon will migrate and 

 immigrate every year until they are captured, increasing in 

 size, not in the same ratio as in their first years, annually, 

 and breeding annually." Some may ask how these facts are 

 known. To such we wall say that repeated experiments have 

 been made by cutting the fins of the young fish or attaching 

 marked labels to them which were easily recognized upon 

 the return of the salmon. 



Mr. Andrew Young, of Sutherlandshire, England, made 

 experiments which he reports as follows :f >«,/ - 



" I have experimented on salmon " says he, " for upwards 

 of thirty years. * * * * Jq 1334 ^nd for a number 

 of years following we marked spawned fish for the purpose 

 of settling the question denied by many, of the return of 

 salmon to their native rivers. This we did satisfactorily. 



* See Fry's Treatise on Fish Breeding,Jpp. 159-60. 

 t See Fry's Treatise on Fish Breeding, pp. 117-18. 



