have taken longer in arriving at the smolt than the first year.” Mr. Buist, in one of his letters on the progress of artificial breeding at the Stormontfield ponds, says: “There is at present a mystery as regards the progress of the young salmon. There can be no doubt that all in our ponds are really and truly the offspring of salmon; no other fish, not even the seed of them, could by any possibility get into the ponds. Now we see that about one half have gone off as smolts, returning in their season as grilses; the other half remain as parrs, and the milt in the males is as much developed, in proportion to the size of the fish, as their brethren of the same age seven to ten pounds weight, whilst these same parrs in the ponds do not exceed one ounce in weight. This is an anomaly in nature which I fear cannot be cleared up at present. I hope, however, by proper attention, some light may be thrown upon it from our experiments next spring. The female parrs in the pond have their ova so undeveloped that the granulations can scarcely be discovered by a lens of some power. It is strange that both Young’s and Shaw’s theories are likely to prove correct, though seemingly so contradictory, and the much-disputed point settled, that parrs (such as ours at least) are truly the young of the salmon.” It is quite certain that parr are young salmon, and that a parr becomes a smolt and goes to the sea, although there are still to be found, no doubt, a few wrong-headed people who will not be convinced on the point, but pridefully maintain all the old salmon theories and prejudices. With them the parr is still a distinct fish, the smolt is the true young of _Salmo salar_ in its first stage, and a grilse is just a grilse and nothing more. However, these old-world people will in time pass away (there is no hope of convincing them), and then the modern views of salmon biography, founded as they are on laborious personal investigation, will ultimately prevail. THE SMOLT AND GRILSE.—But the great parr mystery is still unsolved—that is to say, no one knows on what _principle_ the transformation is accomplished; how it is that only half of a brood ripen into smolts at the end of a year, the other moiety taking double that period to arrive at the same stage of progress. Some scientific visitors to the Stormontfield ponds say that this anomaly is natural enough, and that similar ratios of growth may be observed among all animals; but it is curious that just exactly the half of a brood—and the eggs be it remembered all from adult salmon, and therefore similar in ripeness and other conditions—should change into smolts at the end of a year, leaving a moiety in the ponds as parr for another twelvemonth.