126 GEOWTH OF THE SALMON. 



before that time it might be taken for anything else than a 

 young salmon. Our engravings, which are exactly half the 



size of life, show the progress of the salmon during the first 

 two years of its existence, at the end. of which time it wUl, 

 most likely, have changed into a smolt; After eating up 

 its umbilical bag, which it takes a period of from twenty to 

 forty days to accomplish, the young salmon may be seen 

 about its birthplace, timid and weak, hiding among the stones, 

 and always apparently of the same colour as the surround- 

 ings of its sheltering place. The transverse bars of the parr 

 very early become apparent, and the fish begins to grow 

 with considerable rapidity, especially if it is to be a twelve- 

 months' smolt, and this is very speedily seen at such a good 

 point of observation as the Stormontfield ponds. The smallest 

 of the specimens given in the preceding page represents a parr at 

 the age of two months ; the next in size shows the same fish two 

 months older ; and the remaining fish is six months old. The 

 young fish continue to grow for a little longer than two years 

 before the whole number make the change from parr to smolt and 

 seek the salt water. Half of the quantity of any one hatching, 

 however, begin to change at a little over twelve months from 

 the date of their coming to- life ; and thus there is the extra- 

 ordinary anomaly, as I shall by and by show, of fish of the same 

 hatching being at one and the same time parr of half-an-ounce 

 in weight and grilse weighing four pounds. The smolts of the 

 first year return from the sea whilst their brothers and sisters 

 are timidly disporting in the breeding shallows of the upper 

 streams, having no desire for change, and totally unable to 

 endure the salt water, which would at once kill them. The sea- 

 feeding must be favourable, and the condition of the fish well 

 suited to the salt water, to ensure such rapid growth — a rapidity 

 which every visit of the fish to the ocean serves but to confirm. 

 Various fish, while in the grilse stage, have been marked to 

 prove this; and at every migration they returned to their 



