RESULTS OF SALMON MARKING 57 
growing fish, is reported to have caused considerable 
laceration. 
From those returns we learned something of the 
great increase of weight attained in salmon after 
the sea has been visited, and of the length of time 
certain individual fish had been absent from the 
river; but the investigations were not sufficiently 
sustained to enable any one to understand the 
variations which occur in any district or in different 
districts and to make a sound deduction as to the 
general habit and life history of the salmon in its 
migrations, feeding, and reproduction. Still less 
could proper deductions be made from other obser- 
vations made by Young of Invershin, Fraser, 
Buist, and others, whose method of marking was 
almost invariably that of cutting the adipose fin of 
the fish. 
The one outstanding series of observations in those 
earlier days was carried through by the Tweed 
Commissioners, who from 1851 to 1864, and again 
from 1870 to 1873, conducted a valuable set of 
operations to elucidate the life history of the salmon 
and bull-trout of the Tweed—investigations which 
were scientifically conducted as well as sustained with 
regularity. These investigations have already been 
referred to as yielding us the three early examples 
of marked (wired) smolts recaptured as grilse. 
The more recent marking operations carried on 
by the Fishery Board for Scotland were commenced 
by Mr. Archer during his term of office as Inspector 
of Salmon Fisheries. They were instituted on the 
lines of experiments already made by him in Norway 
