fishes. 527 



am not aware that they generally held the same opinion with respect 

 to the fry taken in small numbers during the summer months, and in 

 large quantities in the autumn.* For the most part they, together 

 with the authors or compilers of books on angling and the writers on 

 Natural History, made the par to be a distinct species of trout, and 

 strong arguments were adduced in support of their doctrine. The 

 consequence was the slaughter of millions and millions of young sal- 

 mon six inches in length, the majority of which, under other circum- 

 stances, would probably have grown up into salmon of some 10 or 15 

 tbs. each. 



No future observer, certainly, however ambitious he may be, can 

 hope to rival Mr. Shaw as to the positive benefits accruing from his 

 discoveries : he must be contented with contributing to the increase 

 of knowledge alone. And yet it is imaginable that the day may come 

 in which such increase of knowledge will not be without its practical 

 results. There can be no question that our rivers and lakes were once 

 far more productive than they are now:f that at one time they really 

 supplied no small proportion of the food of the population : why 

 should they not (with few exceptions) do so again ? Surely not 

 because food is so abundant or so easily procured as to render unne- 

 cessary any addition to it. And what is infallibly to prevent the oc- 

 currence of an emergency in which such a supply of food would be 

 almost invaluable ? Should the emergency arise, and it seems not im- 

 probable that it may, that man will deserve well of his countrymen 

 who can point out the readiest means of restoring to their former 

 teeming condition the inland waters of our isle : and the readiest 

 means could be ascertained only through the medium of an intimate 

 acquaintance with the early history and habits of the several species 

 of fresh-water fish. 



Owing to the warm and dry summer of last year, the waters in the 

 river were long both low and clear, and I was in consequence ena- 



* The spring and autumn shoals had distinct names : the former were called sal- 

 mon-pink, the latter last-springs. The great variety of names attached to the same 

 fish (not only in different parts of the country but in the same locality) is worthy of 

 remark : it seems to betoken perplexity, as well as to proclaim error. Thus, salmon- 

 pink, last-springs, scarling or scurling, brandling, brandling-trout, fingerling, par, 

 smolt, &c. all denote the same fish. 



f The vast quantities of large trout &c. in preserved waters, for instance, in those 

 of the Derbyshire Wye, sufficiently intimate the possibility of extracting, under fa- 

 vourable circumstances, a large and continued supply of food from the British rivers 

 and lakes. And if we may take the statements of a recent work by a foreign author, 

 the experiment would be worth making in more points than one. 



