SECOND REPORT -1832. 
About the beginning of September or latter end of August, 
salmon, now fast losing condition, begin to ascend most of the 
rivers of Great Britain and Ireland for the purpose of spawn¬ 
ing. This migration continues, and the fish, full of milt and 
roe, is entirely worthless for food through the months of Octo¬ 
ber, November, December, and January. The middle of March 
may be considered as the extreme limit of this process, and they 
retire from the spawning-ground as soon afterwards as any flood¬ 
ing of the river occurs. The kelt, or salmon which has spawned, 
is known however, during dry seasons, to remain in the rivers 
until May, and even later, and then return with the first summer 
rains to the ocean. In the cold part of the spring they conceal 
themselves carefully in the smaller streams, and eat little ; taken 
near the source of a river they are truly abominable as food, 
but as they descend the stream and approach the sea at a later 
period, they improve gradually in quality ; never possessing, 
however, that flavour and delicacy which belong to a fresh river 
fish taken at the same time, after floods. In December and 
January, a few salmon in good condition appear in the rivers, 
which had either not assumed the spawning state during the 
preceding year, or had spawned early and returned to the 
ocean, and having recovered their good condition, renewed 
their usual migratory life. The presence of these few good 
fishes in the rivers, by affording a pretext for fishing at impro¬ 
per seasons, has done immense injury to the salmon fisheries. 
Concerning the natural history of the young salmon (smelt or 
fry) from the deposition of the ova to the appearance of the 
young fishes in the tideway of the river, the author describes 
the result of a series of observations on the deposition and de¬ 
velopment of the ova of Salmo StucJiio, in the upper part of 
one of the tributary streams of the Tweed, near its source. 
The observations commenced on the 2nd of November, 1831, 
on which day a pair of this kind of salmon were observed en¬ 
gaged in depositing their ova, and covering them up in a bed 
of gravel, 4 feet long and 8 feet broad, covered by water 6 inches 
in depth. At a depth of from 9 to 12 inches hundreds of ova 
were turned up with the spade : On the 25tli of February they 
were clear, transparent, and to all appearance unchanged. Thus 
the ova had remained one hundred and sixteen days without any 
visible change. The winter had been remarkably mild : abun¬ 
dance of larvse of insects, which serve as food to salmon and 
trout, were dug up with the ova: these, rising through the gravel, 
offer ready food to the trout and salmon of all sizes which may 
be in the river. Some of the ova were transported to Edinburgh 
in six hours, preserved in moss and in water, but none of them 
