SMOLTS 17 
river existence in front of it. Feeding is not 
apparently carried on as steadily in winter as in 
summer, if we may judge from the habits of parr 
reared in ponds, and growth is not therefore 
steady, but in a year the little fish is 34 to 4 inches 
long. At two years the fish becomes a smolt, the 
characteristics of which will be referred to presently. 
All the rearing experiments show that in this 
country the normal age for the silvery scales to 
appear and for the instinct of seaward migration to 
show itself is when the fish are about twenty-five 
to twenty-six months old. Every one knows also 
that the chief season for descent is the spring. The 
old rhyme that the “first floods of May take all 
the smolts away” is not far wrong. Climatic 
conditions determine the amount of variation from 
the normal, and we may state that mild springs, in 
inducing an abundance of feeding early in the season, 
seem to produce an early descent instead of a 
late descent, as would be the case if the fish went 
down solely for the purpose of procuring food. From 
the end of April to the beginning of June is the 
season of chief descent to the sea. 
With regard to the late spawning times in the 
Border rivers, to which reference has been made, 
I would here venture to express the belief that we 
have a condition brought about, not by any natural 
cause, but by the action of man in regulating the 
fisheries so as to allow an undue amount of netting 
to continue too long each season. If the amount of 
netting in confined waters was reduced and the re- 
maining nets wisely regulated, the earlier running 
B 
