CHAPTER VIII. 



THE SPAWNING PERIOD. 



Given a half flood, then, with perhaps a touch of frost, though that 

 is not essential, any day in November, or, indeed, any night — for if 

 conditions are otherwise suitable the fish seize their opportunity 

 irrespective of daylight — the ripe fish move up out of the pools to the 

 stretch of gravel that may have been selected, females and males 

 together. 



By this time the fish, some of which may have been in fresh water 

 since May, are very unlike the beautiful silvery creatures which 

 ascended from the sea. I have heard them at this time pronounced 

 to be repulsive — even loathsome — in appearance by unsympathetic 

 observers. The males (Plate IX) have wholly changed colour; instead 

 of a silvery skin daintily sprinkled with black cruciform spots, the bluish 

 darkness of the back contrasting finely with the gleaming white of the 

 belly, they have now a general yellow tinge mottled all over with 

 reddish brown blotches — I have seen some as yellow as ochre — and 

 the erstwhile silvery scales have sunk deep into their pockets under a 

 coatinsf of mucus while fins and tail alike have become thick and 



o 



leathery. If the general outline of the body has not yet changed much 

 the head seems to have become elongated, and the lower jaw, which 

 normally projects but slightly beyond the upper, has developed a 

 hooked gristly protuberance like that of the male salmon at spawning 

 time, though in the sea-trout this protuberance is never so prominent. 

 For the sake of the contrast now adverted to I showed on a previous 

 page in rough diagram the outline of the head of a male salmon 

 (Fig. 13 (i)) and the head of a male sea-trout (Fig. 13 (2)) as the spawn- 

 ing season approaches. The female, still shapely enough if a little 



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