Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
We gather from our most recent correspondence with Mr Shaw, (Letter of
8th June 1843,) that he does not regard the range in the spawning period
to be followed by a corresponding range in the departure of smolts
towards the sea, and in their return from it as grilse. He has found a
considerable diversity of time in the assumption of the silvery coating
even among individuals of the very same family. "I do not," he observes,
"recollect an instance where there were not individuals of each brood
reared in my ponds, which assumed the migratory coating several weeks
before the brood in general had done so; and these individuals would
have migrated accordingly, and reappeared as grilse all the sooner." As
the hatching and growth of salmon smolts and other fish, is regulated in
a great measure by the temperature of the water in which they dwell, it
is very probable that ova deposited late in the season, (say the month
of March,) may, in consequence of the great increase of temperature, be
hatched much more rapidly than those spawned in mid-winter, and so, by
the end of a couple of years, no great difference will exist between
them. We remember that, in one of Mr Shaw's earlier experiments, it is
stated that he took occasion to convey a few ova in a tumbler within
doors, where the temperature ranged from 45° to 47°. They were hatched
in thirty-six hours, while such as were left in the stream of the pond,
in a temperature of 41°, did not hatch until the termination of seven
subsequent days. The whole had been previously one hundred and six days
in the water, under a considerably lower temperature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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