MYSTEEIES OF SALMON GROWTH. 127 



breeding stream with added weight and improved health. What 

 the salmon feeds upon whUe in the salt water is not well known, 

 as the digestion of that fish is so rapid as to prevent the dis- 

 covery of food in their stomachs when they are captured and 

 opened. Guesses have been made, and it is likely that these 

 approximate to the truth ; but the old story of the rapid voyage 

 of the salmon to the North Pole and back again turns out, like 

 the theory upon which was built up the herring-migration 

 romance, to be a mere myth. 



None of our naturalists have yet attempted to elucidate 

 that mystery of salmon life which converts one-half of the fish 

 into sea-going smolts, while as yet the other moiety remain as 

 parr. It has been investigated so far at the breeding-ponds at 

 Stormontfield, but without resolving the question. There is 

 another point of doubt as to salmon life which I shall also 

 have a word to say about — ^namely, whether or not that fish 

 makes two visits annually to the sea ; likewise whether it be 

 probable that a smolt remains in the salt water for nearly a 

 year before it becomes a grilse. A salmon only stays, as it is 

 popularly supposed, a very short time in the salt water, and as it 

 is one of the quickest swimming fishes we have, it is able to 

 reach a distant river in a very short space of time, therefore it is 

 most desirable that we should know what it does with itself 

 when it is not migrating from one water to the other ; because, 

 according to the opinion of some naturalists, it would speedily 

 become so deteriorated in the river as to be unequal to the 

 slightest exertion. 



The mere facts in the biography of the salmon are not 

 very numerous ; it is the fiction and mystery with which the 

 life of this particular fish have been invested by those ignorant of 

 its history that have made it a greater object of interest than it 

 would otherwise have become. This will be obvious as I briefly 

 trace the amount of controversy and state the arguments which 

 have been expended on the three divisions of its life. 



The Pare Controversy. — None of the controversies con- 

 cerning the growth of the salmon have been so hotly carried on 

 or have proved so fertile in argument as the parr dispute. At 

 certain seasons of the year, most notably in the months of spring 

 and early summer, our salmon streams and their tributaries 

 become crowded, as if by magic, with a pretty little fish, known 

 in Scotland as the parr, and in England as the brandling, the 



