THE SALMON AND WATER TEMPERATURE 129 
A most exhaustive series of sea temperature records 
are available, and, as shown at some length in the 
nineteenth Annual Report on the Salmon Fisheries 
of Scotland, the monthly means for January, Feb- 
ruary, March, and April range on the east coast from 
39° to 44° F., the lowest monthly mean of the whole 
year being in March, while on the west coast it is evi- 
dent, on the high authority of the late Dr. Buchan, 
that “from October to March the west is at least 
2° above the east, and in January it amounts to 3°9°. 
It is an event happening only once in a number of 
years for the temperature of the sea in the west to 
fall below 40°, but in the east this happens every 
year.” * In the west the three coldest months of 
the year are in order February, March, and January. 
The statement that the North Sea is, as compared 
to the ocean water on the west coast, a cold sea in 
the early months of the year, when spring fish run, 
is therefore supported by facts. It is when we ex- 
amine river temperatures during those early months 
—which the theorisers referred to omitted to do— 
that we find an entire absence of any warm water to 
draw fish as supposed. 
A series of maximum and minimum morning and 
evening readings taken from instruments kept con- 
stantly immersed for four years—1880-1884 in- 
clusive—in the Helmsdale and Brora, early rivers 
of east Sutherland, were kindly placed at my dis- 
posal by the Scottish Meteorological Society. From 
these we find ¢ that the Helmsdale and Brora waters 
* Jour. Scot. Meteor. Soc., vol. i., N.S., 1863-66, p. 263. 
y+ Nineteenth Annual Report, Fishery Board for Scotland, IT. 
p. 70. 
I 
