F. day: early and late salmon rivers. 



23 



course, or an alteration in the natural spawning time in the fish 

 irrespective of the condition of the water. The river itself, it was 

 observed, had changed, due to the draining of the sheep farms on 

 the hills, the effect produced being that a little summer flood which, 

 previous to 1795 t0 °k a fortnight or three weeks to run off, now 

 (in 1837) became completely run out in eight hours. The bogs on 

 the hill sides, which were the feeders to the river, have the water at 

 once carried off by drains, causing sudden but short floods, which 

 have all run off before the river has had time to clear itself.* 



Buckland considered that clean scaled, well-developed, fat fish 

 run up some rivers during February and March, possibly earlier ; 

 that these ascending fish must meet the descending kelts. Or in 

 short that there is a small spring migration ascending in contradis- 

 tinction to the usual large autumnal migration for breeding purposes. 

 He found that the amount of fat upon the pyloric appendages of 

 these spring fresh-run fish, less than what is seen in such as migrated 

 later for breeding purposes. Denying that they are barren, he 

 considered that they would not breed the season they ascended the 

 stream, or in fact that they were temporarily sterile. He thought they 

 had laid up sufficient fat in the sea or estuaries to take a run into 

 freshwater, fancying they might be the early kelts of the previous 

 year, which having reached the sea, say in January, re-appear as 

 clean fish in thirteen months, or February the next year, or even 

 very large fresh-run fish in twenty-five months, or February the 

 succeeding year. He likewise remarked that it is impossible to 

 convert a ' late ' into an ' early ' river. 



Professor Huxley in his Annual Report for 1884, entered upon 

 his views regarding ' early ' and ' late ' rivers. Having quoted Yarrell's 

 observation, 1 that some rivers are much earlier than others, the fish 

 in them coming into breeding condition and beginning to spawn at 

 an earlier period,'t he continued : 'I am not aware of the grounds on 



* Buckland accounted for an alteration in the summer run of grilse from this 

 cause, but up to the present time there have been too few and too superficial 

 inquiries made to be able to decide either whether the period of migration has 

 changed, or is changing, and secondly what influence the Land Drainage Act of 

 1861, or rather its operation, has in reality effected. 



f Yarrell's observations on this point, as remarked by himself, were based on 

 those of Sir W. Jardine, who had observed in the ' Edinburgh New Philosophical 

 Journal' of 1835, from which Yarrell quoted, that 'it is a mistaken opinion to 

 suppose that the spawning season is only between October and February. In 

 many rivers it would commence in the end of August, if the grounds and entrance to 

 the rivers were left open and unmolested ; and in some of the Sutherland streams 

 which have been left undisturbed for the last two years, the spawning season has 

 been adva nced by a month or six weeks ' (pages 48, 49). 

 Jan. 1886. 



