o2 
a valuable article of food. After birth the young 
salmon for some time is in a very helpless condition, 
but being provided by nature with its bag of nourish¬ 
ment, it does not require to search for food. It has 
numerous enemies, and in order to avoid them it 
naturallv hides under stones till the umbilical bag 
has been absorbed, which takes place in six weeks. 
The fish then leaves its hiding place and begins to 
look about for food, and in a week or two it gets very 
active and interesting. At Stormontfield the young 
fishes are regularly fed with boiled liver gTound 
small, and a very prettjr sight it is to see how they 
rise and take it when thrown into the water. 
Our young salmon at this stage is note known as a 
pruT. Before 1836 very little was known of the young 
salmon, when Mr Shaw, liead-keeper to the Duke of 
Buccleuch at Drumlanrig Castle, discovered, after 
careful observation, that parrs were young salmon. 
Mr Shaw transferred some parrs from the river 
Nith to a pond prepared for the purpose, and after a 
certain period they assumed the migratory dress and 
movements, in other words they became smolts. 
Here it was proved that the parr is the infant of the 
salmon ; unless, indeed, it was to be denied that 
smolts a,re the vouth of the salmon, and in due time 
become salmon themselves. Mext, Mr Shaw, 
w’atching till a jDair of salmon had deposited their ova 
in a stream of the Mith, transfemed the ova to an 
artificial stream connected with his pond ; and after 
a time the eggs were hatched and the produce was 
parrs. Here it was proved that the salmon is the 
parent of the parr. The case was thus proved from 
both ends — the parr was shown to be salmon in 
infancy, and the salmon to be parr in maturity. 
However, to make this more clear if there was 
any grounds for doubt at all, Mr Shaw caught in the 
river two salmon about to spawn, and having 
spawned them in his own stream, the result again in 
due time was parrs. JSTearly twenty years later, 
similar experiments on a larger scale and with the 
same results were made at the Stormontfield Ponds, 
where parrs and nothing but parrs were hatched 
from the ova of salmon by hundreds of thousands, 
