SALMON— HOME-IKG INSTINCTS: DESERTING RIVERS. 6? 



Were the homeing instinct in these fishes very strongly marted, such as 

 were hatched from eggs brought from a certain river might (like the Blue-rock 

 Pigeons reared from eggs obtained from another dovecote) return to the locality 

 where the ova were originally deposited. But if such were an invariable rule, the 

 re-stocking of salmonless rivers from distant sources would be useless, while 

 experiments have demonstrated the procedure to be almost invariably satisfactory. 



Still a very strong opinion exists, and which observations have proved to be to 

 a certain extent correct, that salmon return to the river they were originally 

 reared in. Mr. Willis-Bund has, however, adduced several instances in which if 

 salmon return to a tributary river in which they were bred, they must have always 

 come as breeders, for clean fish hardly ever enter. Some have imagined that they 

 select the purest waters, or recognize the taste or smell of their native stream ; but, 

 on the other hand, it has been asked, how could the purity of the water induce 

 salmon to enter certain rivers, for they generally ascend during a flood, when they 

 are most full of mud, but at which times the fish are keenest to pass up. 



Irrespective of salmon having died out of a river, instances have been 

 adduced in which it has been stated that they have deserted* streams, but the 

 statements of H.M.' Inspectors of Fisheries that sea-trout have driven salmon out 

 of the Coquet is wanting in one particular. There does not seem to be evidence 

 that they were ever there habitually in any numbers, so much so that sea trout 

 appear to be locally termed salmon. 



The foregoing are instances in which such desertion cannot be ascribed to 

 pollution or artificial impediments to ascent, but owing to some as yet unascer- 

 tained cause. Possibly the numerous drainage works in the agricultural country 

 through which these rivers pass have had some effect in rendering them less 

 suitable than formerly for the residence of these fish, as the surface water, instead 

 of gradually percolating through the soil, and so by degrees obtaining access to 

 the main stream, is now rapidly carried off in a short period by these means ; while 

 I have previously alluded (page 61) to an "early" river having changed to a 

 " late " one, possibly from this cause. 



had been taken in the Fritli of Forth, the Don and Dee, while to the south at Holy Island, the 

 Tyne, Shields, and even Yarmouth. This last was a so-oalled "bull trout," caught in the Whit- 

 adder, a tributary of the Tweed, on March 29th, 1852 ; it was netted at Winteston, near Yarmouth, 

 April 2nd, 1852, or nearly 300 miles distant, within four days. A second, marked in the Whit- 

 adder, March 10th, 1860, was taken at Yarmouth, May 5th, 1860. He considered it certain that 

 salmon, after having frequented particular rivers from time immemorial, have abandoned them ; 

 and the inference is that they betake themselves to other rivers which they deem preferable. As 

 an example of this, the Whitadder may be referred to : it has a course of about forty miles from 

 the Lammermuir Hills : this river joins the Tweed at a distance from its mouth of about three 

 miles, so that aU the sahnon caught in the higher waters of the Tweed must have passed the 

 Whitadder. The tide flows into it as weU as into the Tweed, going up the latter for six or seven 

 miles. Formerly the true Salmo salar frequented the Whitadder, but during the last thirty years 

 none of that species has been seen in it. It is now only frequented by bull trout. In the 

 Midlothian Esk, he also remarked that about fifty years ago he had seen hundreds of true salmon 

 wriggling up over the mill weirs ; but for the last twenty years there has been no such fish in 

 that river. 



Mr. Willis-Bund, in Salmon Problems, observed that " in one week in December, 1872, the water- 

 bailiff caught and put into the Severn forty fish from the Dowles Brook, and in a few hours the 

 fish had all returned to the brook" (p. 26). 



* In 1864, Eussel observed (p. 71) respecting bidl trout, that the Aln and the Coquet are full of 

 that species to the almost entire exclusion of salmon and grilse. And a few years later it was 

 suggested by H.M. Inspectors of Fisheries that this latter was owing to thft presence of "bull 

 trout ; " consequently, if they were destroyed salmon would again flourish 1 From 1868 to 1872 

 the annual close time for migratory trout was suspended, and the destruction of these anadromous 

 forms ruthlessly carried on. The amount of trout was soon reduced, their stock was rapidly 

 diminished, but the salmon would not increase, so the massacre was stopped. And now again, 

 in 1885, the Inspector observed of the Coquet that it " is a much later river than any of its neigh- 

 bours in the east, but this may be accounted for by the fact that that river is infested by bull trout, 

 whose habits are different from those of the true salmon." A correspondent of the Kelso Mail 

 observed that " the Coquet trout is the common yellow fin or Salmo fario, and the bull trout are 

 the salmon of the river. There are no true salmon, 8. salar, in the Coquet, the only fish 

 frequenting the river being the bull trout, but with Coquet-side fishermen the term salmon and 

 bull trout are synonymous : hence ' salmon ' with them means S. eriox or buU trout, and trout 

 8. fario, or common river trout." (See Badmin. Series, p. 151.) 



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