4388 Dublin Natural History Society. 



Dublin Natural History Society. 



June 16, 1854. — James R. Dombrain, Esq., in the chair. 



The following paper, by Mr. Audrews, was read: — 



Habits of the Salmon. 



" It had been my intention this evening to have submitted to the Society some 

 peculiarities that T had observed in the spawning states of the Syngnathidae, or pipe- 

 fish family, more especially with reference to Syngnathus typhle — the deep-nosed 

 pipe-fish, and to the straight-nosed pipe-fish (S. ophidian), and to have added a review 

 of the several British species (all of which I have obtained on the South-west coast), 

 detailing their several habits and seasons of spawning. From this, however, I have 

 been diverted by several communications that have been made relative to the habits 

 of the salmon, and as to the identity of the fish known as the parr or gravelling with 

 the Salmo salar. This being a subject of such importance, not only in a scientific 

 point, but in its practical application, that I again lay aside my paper upon the 

 Syngnathidae, with the hope that this will afford full discussion of interest for the 

 evening. It may be in the recollection of the Members a paper of great interest given 

 by Mr. Ffennell, Inspecting Commissioner of Fisheries, in the month of February, 

 1849, " On the Habits and Spawning States of the Salmon, and upon the Salmon 

 Fisheries of this Country." In that paper Mr. Ffennell supported the views of Mr. 

 Shaw, of Drumlanrig, relative to the first, and the parr state of the young salmon, 

 and its remaining two years in the river before it assumed the smolt or migratory 

 state; and though he admitted that the seasons and the condition of salmon were not 

 the same in all rivers, yet he maintained that a uniform system of open and close sea- 

 son should be adopted in order to prevent the nefarious and injurious system that 

 might probably result in salmon being exposed for sale in a public market taken from 

 a close river while other rivers were open. This paper was in some measure an ex- 

 planation with reference to an inquiry held on the fisheries of the Caragh and the 

 Laune, in Kerry. My friend Mr. Williams, at that meeting of the Society, energetic- 

 ally disputed that the fish known generally as the parr or gravelling was the young of 

 the salmon. He had made examinations of an extensive collection of that little fish, 

 which he had obtained throughout the seasons from the rivers of Cork and of Wick- 

 low, and he was not disposed to agree with Mr. Shaw, of Drumlanrig, that all gravel- 

 lings were the young of the salmon. At the meetings of the months of April and of 

 May last notices were again brought forward by Mr. Ffennell and by Mr. Williams, 

 and which, differing in some views and principles, I thought it might lead to interest- 

 ing, and I trust useful discussion, to submit some of the fish in the parr and in the 

 smolt state, and to offer a few remarks. At the time of that discussion, in 1849, my 

 attention had been chiefly directed to the sea-fisheries of the West coast ; but during 

 the seasons of 1848, 1849 and 1850, I had ample practical means of forming observa- 

 tions in the salmon fishery connected with the project I was engaged in. Determined 

 to follow out that inquiry as time and circumstances permitted, my friend Mr. Wil- 

 liams accompanied me on the 23rd of May to Carlow, to visit the little river Greece. 

 Former recollections and frequent fishing excursions satisfied me that the little fish 

 known and described as the parr by Yarrell existed there in abundance. The rivers 

 Greece and Ler, which stream through the borders of Carlow and Kildare, and empty 



