“None of our naturalists have yet attempted to elucidate that mystery of salmon life which converts one‐half of the fish into sea‐going smolts, whilst as yet the other moiety remain as parr. It has been investigated so far at the breeding‐ponds at Stormontfield, but without resolving the question. There is another point of doubt as to salmon life which I shall also have a word to say about—namely, whether or not that fish makes two visits annually to the sea; likewise, whether it be probable that a smolt remains in the salt water for nearly a year before it becomes a grilse. A salmon only stays, as it is popularly supposed, a very short time in the salt water; and as it is one of the quickest‐swimming fishes we have, it is able to reach a distant river in a very short space of time, therefore it is most desirable we should know what it does with itself when it is not migrating from one water to the other; because, according to the opinion of some naturalists, it would speedily become so deteriorated in the river as to be unequal to the slightest exertion.... “At every stage of its career the salmon is surrounded by enemies. At the very moment of spawning, the female is watched by a horde of devourers, who instinctively flock to the breeding‐grounds in order to feast on the ova. The hungry pike, the lethargic perch, the greedy trout, the very salmon itself, are lying in wait, all agape for the palatable roe, and greedily swallowing whatever quantity the current carries down. Then the waterfowl eagerly pounces on the precious deposit the moment it has been forsaken by the fish; and if it escape being gobbled up by such cormorants, the spawn may be washed away by a flood, or the position of the bed may be altered, and the ova be destroyed, perhaps for want of water. As an instance of the loss incidental to salmon‐spawning in the natural way, I may just mention that a whiting of about three‐quarters of a pound weight has been taken in the Tay with three hundred impregnated salmon ova in its stomach! If this fish had been allowed to dine and breakfast at this rate during the whole of the spawning season it would have been difficult to estimate the loss our fisheries would have sustained by his voracity. No sooner do the eggs ripen, and the young fish come to life, than they are exposed, in their defenceless state, to be preyed upon by all the enemies already enumerated; while, as parr, they have been taken out of our streams in such quantities as to be available for the purpose of pig‐feeding and manure! Some economists estimate that only one egg out of every thousand becomes a full‐sized salmon. Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart calculated that 150,000,000 of salmon ova are annually deposited in the river Tay; of which only 50,000,000, or one‐third, come to life and attain the parr stage; that 20,000,000 of these parr become in time smolts, and that their number is ultimately diminished to 100,000; of