92 SALMONID^ OF BRITAIN. 



The smolt,* as Old Log observed in the Field, January 24th, 1885, goes out to 

 sea on the autumn floods, returning next year as grilse. But they also descend to 

 the salt water during other months in the year. When at Montrose at the end 

 of June, 1882, I saw several smolts taken from the stomach of a saithe, Gadus 

 virens, captured in the sea a couple of miles from the coast. A similar occurrence 

 was noticed at the same place in December, 1881, the fish which had eaten the 

 smolt being a whiting. When at Aberdeen in July, 1882, Mr. Sim showed me some 

 smolts similarly procured from the stomach of a marine fish. In fact this has 

 been observed at different localities, proving conclusively that the migratory 

 smolt passes into the ocean. 



It has been asserted that while these fish retain the par livery they are unable 

 to live in salt water, and that on some being so transferred they at once died and 

 became of a beautiful carmine colour, but such does not appear to be invariably 

 the case, as was shown by Mr. Francis Francis, who observed in The Field, May 

 10th, 1879, that at the Brighton Aquarium about twenty small salmon par were 

 placed in a fresh-water tank, and in the next May, about eight months after they 

 had been received, most commenced to assume the smolt livery, but four remained 

 golden pars. Salt water was gradually introduced, but this did not prove fatal 

 to the pars, as it had been feared it might, while the smolts became rampant with 

 pleasure as the water became more and more salt. When no fresh water remained, 

 the pars began to assume the smolt livery, and the change was described as being 

 truly marvellous. They ate five times as much as previously, were in incessant 

 and rapid motion all day, and their growth became perfectly astonishing. Curiously 

 enough, there was at the time among them a common trout. He too took to the 

 salt water very kindly, and fed smartly and grew very rapidly. 



Smolts that have descended rivers have been shown to re-ascend as grilse,t 



H.M. Inspector of Fisheries for 1885 now joined in and asserted that having inquired respect- 

 ing this subject " the answer was more or less in the negative from every district except the Dee, 

 the Seiont, the Wye, the Avon, the Erne, the Trent and the Severn" (Annual Eeport for 1885, 

 p. 4) ; concluding with the novel observation and interesting application thereof that 

 " one swallow does not make a summer, and care should be taken not to assume a general fact 

 from isolated instances." Since then the Chairman of the Severn Fishery Board marked about 

 two dozen smolts one day in October 1886. The water bailiffs consider the samlets which migrate 

 down the Teme in the autumn to be a distinct kind of fish from the salmon fry that migrate in 

 the spring, or the same idea which prevailed many years ago higher up in the Severn. 



* Scotus remarked, Land and Water, " I have seen them on a fine spring morning going down 

 the slack water in shoals of eight or ten head first, going about twice as fast as the water that 

 they might breathe. I have no doubt but that in four-mile- an-hour water they go tail first. They 

 are safer, and if the water was running four miles, except they went six or eight miles an hour, 

 they could not breathe. When the river is small and clear I have never seen smolts running down 

 during the daytime, only early in the morning, just about sun-rise. No doubt when the river is 

 coloured they run all day." " In some waters, as where they are quick and rough, smolts have 

 been observed to descend tail first, but in smooth slow water, as a mile an hour, they have been 

 seen to go down head first." 



Owing to certain legal proceedings two individuals acquainted with fish or fisheries, were deputed 

 in 1809 to examine into the migrations in the Tay of smolts seawards, and the results are given in detaU 

 in the Report of the Fish. Committee for 1824. It seems they inspected the whole stake nets in which 

 they never found either sahnon fry or small fish of any kind except flounders, but saw alarge quantity 

 drawn ashore at Stockgreen by the nets used in the net-and-coble fishing. Below Carpow bank they 

 found no salmon fry, although they fished the river with the small meshed nets both in the eddy 

 water and in the stream, and never found them in the spirling nets although it is believed some fry 

 descend in April while spirlings are being taken. They saw the fry in the Tay first on April 28th, 

 immediately below Perth, in thousands, and found them downwards all the way till within half a 

 mile above the junction of the Earn with the Tay. At high water and at the first of the flood, 

 the fry were observed in the easy water near the side of the river, and when the tide ebbed, they 

 appeared to go into the current, and the last fry which they caught with the net in going down 

 the river was in the channel opposite to Carpow bank, from which point, down to below Broughty, 

 trials were made in every part of the Tay for salmon fry but none were found. Every means were 

 employed to capture them in deep water between high and low water-mark, but without success, 

 and one of the men considered that the surf or agitation of the water between high and low water- 

 mark in the Erith compels them to go into deep water, and the swell in the deep water forces 

 them to go deeper down. 



t Eraser, On the Salmon, dc, 1833, pp. 15, 16, remarked : " In April (1825) I marked several of 

 the fry (of the salmon), and only one of them came to my hands in July. Two of them were 



