and on the Salmon-Fisheries, 
m 
A considerable degree of importance seems to be attached to this brarfch of 
the inquiry, with the view of determining the question, Whether the fish bred 
in a particular river always return to their birth-place, and to no other river. 
Sir Humphry Davy assumes that “ salmon, and salmon-trout, belong, in fact, 
to the river in which they were spawned,” and that “ each variety of salmon or 
salmon-trout affects a particular river, and always returns to it;” p. 145. 
The other witnesses seem generally to entertain the same opinion. Mr Little 
has been told of evidence on this subject, p. 112. ; but i\o facts are communica- 
ted. Indeed, Mr HdfWAsij asserts^ that “ they do not all come to the same river 
in which they were bred ;” and as a proof of this he states, “ I found the dif- 
ferent rivers vary from one year to another ; but when one is protected and 
another unprotected, the unprotected river keeps up its quantity as well as 
the protected one p. 87- Judging from analogy, we should consider it pro- 
bable, that, in the absence of deranging circumstances, the fish bred in a river 
wmuld generally return to it ; but not a few, under the influence of those 
feelings on which depend the peopling of the globe, would wander into other 
rivers. And when we consider the persecutions from seals, grampuses and 
sharks, to which salmon are exposed in the sea, in connection with their 
social or gregarious disposition^ it is impossible to avoid drawing the inference, 
that the tribes belonging to different rivers must be frequently dispersed and 
mixed., and have their future movements controlled by other circumstances 
than the localities of their birth. In point of fact, salmon, so far from be- 
longing to the rivers in which they were bred^ belong to the sea^ the place of 
their ordinary residence^ where they groiv and feed. The ordinary laws of citi- 
isenship, therefore, are not applicable to salmon. 
II. GaiLSE — Sir H. Davy and Mr John Wilson consider this fish as a 
young salmon ; other witnesses, as Messrs Little, Johnstone and Halliday, 
entertain a different opinion, viewing it as a distinct species. They found this 
opinion of its claim to rank as a species on the circumstances, of its being found 
full of milt or of roe, and of its spawning and return to the sea as a kelt or spawned 
fish. But fish spawn long before they attain maturity, consequently this test 
is of little value. But other proofs are offered. Mr Johnstone says, “The 
grilse is a much less fish in general ; it is much smaller at the tail in propor- 
tion, and it has a much more swallow tail, much more forked ; it is smaller 
at the head, sharper at the point of the nose, and generally the grilse is more 
bright in the scales than the salmon ;” p. 38. Mr Halliday states, that “ a 
grilse’s tail is very much forked, like that of a swallow ; a salmon’s tail is 
not forked like that of a grilse, and the chowk fins (pectorals) of a grilse are 
much more blue in th eir colour than a salmon’s ; a grilse is much smaller at 
the head and immediately above the tail than a salmon is ; it seems to be a 
different fish in shape every waj'- ; besides, it goes up full of spawn in the end 
of the 3'^ear, and does not come down till the spring, when it is a kelt grilse, 
while the young salmon are coming up the rivers in numbers of at least fifty 
young salmon for every kelt grilse that returns to the sea p. 63. Mr Little, 
who entertains a similar opinion to the two preceding witnesses, states, that 
grilses enter rivers in June, seldom in May, p. 112., (confirmed by Mr Hal- 
liday, p. 53.) ; and adds, “We do not find in some rivers the same proportion 
