4990 Fishes. 



winter, are found to have the milt largely developed, as is known to 

 take place in such numbers in the winter parr of rivers. This curious 

 fact, could it be altogether depended on, is an answer to those who 

 assert that all young salmon leave the river in the May following the 

 year of their birth, for were this the case no such thing as the winter 

 parr full of milt ought any where to be found. Again, my esteemed 

 friend, Mr. Buist, informs me by letter that the young salmon now 

 (November, 1855) in the ponds of Stormontfield, are no larger than 

 they were last year at this time. 



It is quite a mistake to imagine that it is only at the approach of 

 or during the winter months that certain parr acquire a largely- 

 developed milt; a reference to my little work, ' Fish and Fishings in 

 Scotland,' will convince any one that mere parr (young salmon ?) may 

 be found in the rivers at all seasons of the year with the milt fully de- 

 veloped. iC On the 3rd of September thirteen parr were caught in the 

 Tweed between the Beild Bridge and Palmudie ; of these two only 

 were females, the rest males ; some were eight and a half inches long, 

 others only four or five. In the largest the milts were enormously 

 developed." Now to which class of smolts are we to refer these small 

 fishes? Again, on the 30th of July, 1832, six parr were caught with 

 the artificial fly at Romano Bridge, on the Lyne, a tributary of the 

 Tweed : they were of the usual size, averaging probably five inches ; 

 all were males with the milts large.* Do we find the grown salmon 

 with the milts large in July ? In the Eddlestone Water, a tributary of 

 the Tweed, smolts abounded in the stream in vast numbers on the 

 29th of May; they were from four to five inches in length, and were 

 rapidly migrating; by the 29th of the same month they had all left 

 the stream, and yet, on the 1st of June, in the Tweed, a little lower 

 down the stream, parr were taken seven inches and three quarters 

 in length, whilst their brethren, three to four inches in length, 

 had become smolts and fled to the ocean. Now examine, as I have 

 done, hundreds and hundreds of the smolts on their way to the ocean 

 in May, and you will never find in one of these the milt in the slightest 

 degree altered or exhibiting any appearance of its ever having been 

 so. I have stated several other difficulties in the history of the Sal- 

 monidae in the work already quoted, and to that I beg leave to refer 

 the reader. 



Summary of Facts and Opinions. 



As- early as the times of Ray and Willughby it was known that 

 the salmon ascended rivers from the ocean to deposit their ova or eggs 



