Fishes. 4835 



really arrived, led to the wiser resolution of the committee, that the 

 more advanced and matured of their charge should be allowed to 

 follow the dictates of their nature. The result has proved the wisdom 

 of this resolution. To have confined the whole fish would certainly 

 not have proved that salmon fry remain two years in the river before 

 going to the sea ; while, by the course which has been adopted, it has 

 been proved that the larger part of them remain in the river only one 

 year. We cordially congratulate all the gentlemen concerned upon 

 this highly satisfactory and gratifying result of their experiment ; and 

 we trust we shall speedily have to congratulate those gentlemen more 

 immediately interested, perhaps, in the success of this scheme for 

 increasing the produce of the river, upon a very abundant grilse 

 season. 



But, while several points in regard to the natural history of the 

 salmon have been thus clearly and most satisfactorily determined, one 

 very interesting question is still pending at Stormontfield. While all 

 the ova were deposited in November and December, 1853, and all the 

 hatching was completed in April and May, 1854, only about two-thirds 

 of the fry had attained the migratory stage in May and June, 1855. 

 One-third of the original stock are still in the pond, and, although 

 the sluice has never been closed since it was first opened in May, 

 they manifest no desire whatever to leave it. In point of fact, with 

 perfectly free means of egress, not one of them has left the pond since 

 the general migration ceased at the 7th of June last. Thus, while one 

 portion of the same hatching are being captured in the river, beauti- 

 fully grown grilses of 24 inches in length, another portion is still 

 enjoying the shelter of the pond, tiny creatures, none of them more 

 than three or four inches long. The result of this striking feature in 

 the experiment will be watched with much interest. It may be, that, 

 while Mr. Young was right in holding that smolts migrated to the sea 

 at the end of the first year after hatching, and his opponents were 

 wrong in maintaining that they only migrated at the end of the second, 

 they, too, were so far right, should it be found, notwithstanding the 

 migration of a portion at the end of the first year, that a portion also 

 remains over the second. 



We can only remark now, in regard to the sexual question raised 

 in connexion with this subject, that nothing whatever has as yet been 

 established in regard to it at Stormontfield, further than that the grilse 

 taken on Friday was a female, and that on Tuesday a male ; and that 

 any observations that have been made on the small fish give reason 



