I have more than once after nightfall passed a quiet half-hour at our cottage door inhaling the saline breath of the mighty sea. The look-out at midnight is very beautiful: the Cumbrae light looked like a monitor telling us that even at that dread hour we were watched over. On the opposite coast of Ayr a huge ironwork threw a lurid glare upon the bosom of the sea, and almost at my feet the restless waves were playing a mournful dirge on the boulder-crowded beach. I could see along the water to Holy Island, and could almost feel the silence that at that moment would render the cave of old Saint Molio a wondrous place for holding a feast of the imagination, the viands being brought forward from a far-back time, and the island again peopled with the quaint races that had passed a brief span of life upon its shores—who had been warmed by the same sun as had that day shone upon me, and whose nights had been illumined by the same moon that was now shimmering its soft radiance upon the liquid bosom of the sparkling waters. CHAPTER V. THE NATURAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE SALMON. The Salmon our best-known Fish—Controversies and Anomalies—Food of Salmon—The Parr Controversy—Experiments by Shaw, Young, and Hogg—Grilse: its Rate of Growth—Do Salmon make Two Voyages to the Sea in each Year?—The Best Way of marking Young Salmon—Enemies of the Fish—Avarice of the Lessees—The Rhine Salmon—Size of Fish—Killing of Grilse—Rivers Tay, Spey, Tweed, Severn, etc.—The Tay Fisheries—Report on English Fisheries—Upper and Lower Proprietors.