mouth gapes, it is not with wonder, but with eagerness to imbibe the creamy-sparkling champagne; and when we shew ourselves at the evening meetings, it is not for the purpose of staring at the geological and zoological professors, but with the gentler and far more pleasing object of refreshing our eyes, albeit at the peril of our heart, and paying our homage as a sincere worshipper to the surpassing beauty of the ladies of the land. In truth these scientific meetings should speedily be put a stop to, for at those which we have seen-Edinburgh and Newcastle-the influence of Minerva decidedly waned before the predominating planet of Venus. Many an ancient sage have we descried, perhaps unearthed for the first time from the solitudes of his dusty study, perfectly bewildered and dazzled by the glare of meteoric beauty which flashed around him on every side: many a renowned philosopher, whose tongue, for the first time loosed from the thraldom of scientific jargon, essayed with clumsy gallantry to catch the tone of fashionable life, and prattle soft nonsense in the ear of the attentive syrens. One professor we know of the mature age of seventy, whose whole existence had been devoted to the study of the theory of vibrations, and who had so far succeeded in identifying his subject with himself that he shook all over like a jelly or a suspension bridge-this venerable individual, we say, being doubtless instigated thereto by the machinations of the mischievous boy Cupid, did actually and absolutely discard his old brown bob wig, for years innumerable the sole covering of his scalp, and in place thereof did adopt a Macalpine, whereon curls like Hyperion's were wreathed in ambrosial luxuriance, and in this guise, with a huge posy maccaroni-wise inserted into his button hole, did he drop upon his knees at the feet of a blooming maiden of seventeen, and with a voice which the dear little innocent might have fancied to proceed from the coffin of her buried grandfather, woo her to become the future partner of his heart and home! These be ominous signs, and such as the few professors who have remained steadfast to their old allegiance, and have not bowed the knee to Baal, would do well to regard with jealousy. Let us have but three scientific meetings more, and we venture to prophesy that the first mechanical genius of the land will be more devotedly employed in inventing an improvement for the fan, than he ever was for the construction of a steam-engine; the first geologist, in scraping whalebone, instead of hunting out the organic remains of the icthyosaurus; and the first chemist, in place of investigating the qualities of iodine, engaged in compounding a new wash or cosmetic to 'renovate the remains of fading beauty. Let the philosophers look to it in time.

We, as we said before, being no philosopher, have nothing to offer in the present article except the results which we have gathered from a long experience. Boy and man we have not been absent one single season from the river-side since we could handle a fishing-rod. We were born and bred in one of the best angling districts in Scotland, A stream larger than a burn, although perchance less than a river, ran at not more than a stone cast's distance from the door of our father's house. Our earliest recollection is of a shallow pool, where in the hot days of summer we, the infant ORGANIST, used to inveigle diminutive minnows into a tinny. The first epoch of our life was the capture of a

VOL. XIX,-SECOND SERIES.-No. 109.

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real trout. We can point out at this day the stream wherein he bolted our worm, impaled upon a crooked pin, and the bank whereupon, by a vigorous jerk of the pack-thread, we chucked him with a yell of frantic and fierce delight. The crowning act and glory of our boyhood was the slaughter of a magnificent grilse. We have angled through all Scotland and in some parts of England: we have thrown a line in the Seine, the Rhine, the Maine, and the Lahn; we have penetrated through the heart of Norway, fishing vehemently as we went; and having done all this, we think we have some right to speak on the subject of salmon, albeit we interlard not our discourse with the orthodox scientific names.

First, then, let us picture to ourselves a fish-and from motives of gallantry we shall select a female-a virgin salmon of some twelve pound weight, glossy and lustrous in her scales, taper in her shape, plump in her bosom, graceful with her fins, a creature all joy and beauty, just issuing from the great boarding-school of the ocean, and drawn by some mysterious impulse to the mouth of a mighty river, wherein her future lot is to be cast. Let us imagine her escaped from the grasp of the ravenous porpoise, the bite of the fell sea-otter, and, more destructive still, the meshes of the thousand nets which line the shores of the Scottish estuaries. Untouched and unscared she has glided past them all; the turbid and brackish water has disappeared from around her, and she now luxuriates in the sweetness and the purity of the streams. Many miles behind her lie the vessels whose monstrous shadows, reflected by the morning sun, startled her as she winnowed her uncertain way beneath. Few and tiny are the boats which here lie moored at the water's edge. The banks become steeper and steeper, the corn-land is exchanged for the pasture, and lo! upon both sides of that long and silent pool is a massy wood, flinging its branches archways across, and maintaining even at noonday a delicious coolness beneath. Happy fish! thrice blessed salmon! Tarry while thou mayest in that lonely pool, for not between this and the fountain at which this glorious river first bubbles from the earth wilt thou find so quiet a retreat or so secure a dwelling. No tyrant pike lurks amidst those twisted roots to strike thee unawares. The otter, implacable enemy of thy kind, has his home in the banks of a burn many miles above; and never by moonlight was that robber seen prowling on the banks or diving in the crystal waters of the maiden's pool. Human fraud or ingenuity thou needst not fear. Angler there is none who could throw a line beneath the branches of those venerable trees; and he who would wade the pool even in the drought of summer would find the element rise nearer to his lips than it doth to those of the thirsty Tantalus. Never did a fly ribbed with golden wire, disguised with hackle and with hair, and buoyant with the plume of turkey or of drake, float its deceitful beauty along the smooth gliding of the current. Yet there be insects there in abundance of Nature's fashioning, as gaudy, and ten times as graceful as the wiliest artifice of man. The warrior dragon fly, cased in armor, blue as ether, flits across the surface towards yon patch of reeds which marks the margin of the stream; the golden butterfly, descending from the trees, flutters his large wing upon the surface; and the moth caught in the current floats lazily with the stream, unconscious o the destruction that awaits it from eager mouths below. In

the shadow of the wood, or where the solitary sunbeam pierces into its depths, what myriads of ephemeral life are hovering in the mazy dance! and there among the blue-bells hangs the busy bee, best emblem of industry, accompanying her labor with a song. All here is life, happy unmolested life-the birds on the bough, the insects in the air, the fish in the stream, all luxuriating in the consciousness of their young and blissful being!

But a change has come over the face of the smiling heavens ! Sudden gusts of wind arise, and come sweeping down the pool, bearing the foam in large masses before them. The chrystal mirror is broken, and reflects no more the images of the dependent trees. The trees themselves begin to sway from their roots upwards, and the branches to creak against each other. Yon distant mountain, the boundary of the Highland line, was last night swathed in mist, and now, behind its cumbrous bulk, huge heaps of clouds are ascending, gloomy, ominous, and dark. Swiftly do they come; and yet so vast is their extent, that you would deem the march of that celestial army slow, were it not that the heavens are now more than half obscured, and that a growl like that of distant thunder in the far-off hills gives warning that the tempest is abroad. A momentary lull, a short pause as of expectation succeeds. Then comes the signal. A vivid flash of lightning followed by a deafening peal darts from the bursting bosom of the cloud, and down comes the rain in sheets as if a waterspout had broken in the heaven. Do you hear that sound in the distance, as though a herd of mighty creatures were racing down, roaring and bellowing as they come? "Tis the voice of the river in flood. A hundred tributaries leaping from the hills have borne the tribute of the clouds to swell its channel. Down it comes raging and resistless, and the ford which this morning you might have crossed almost without wetting your knee, is now impassable to a legion!

We certainly ought to be cautious how we write about the Highlands. The moment we speak of a loch, or a mountain, or a river, our unmanageable brute of a Pegasus starts up between our legs, and whisks us off as if a bunch of whins were insinuated beneath his tail, a thousand leagues from the boundaries of common sense, and at least as far from the subject with which we originally started. Absolutely we are ashamed when we think of the unceremonious way in which we left that salmon in the pool. But we need not go back to her now, for she has taken advantage of the spate, and is lying in another stream far up near the source of the river. If you please we shall pay her a visit in her new situation.

peep

Behind that gray stone which divides the current in its roughest part, we shall find, if my experience deceives me not sadly, our maiden salmon. Let us borrow the privilege of invisibility (for which purpose behold a cap snatched from the head of a fairy), and take another at her lovely sides of silver. Yes, there she lies, her graceful body balanced across the stream, her fins almost motionless, and yet sustaining her by the slightest of possible exertions against the rush of the swollen water. But what is that we behold?

"O sin! O sorrow! and O salmon kind!" She is not alone. A large long-snouted corpulent twenty-pound he-salmon is floating by

her side, and to all appearances has already succeeded in making himself remarkably agreeable. Better and better ! A large lubberly trout on the other side of the stone has also been smitten with the attractions of Lady Silversides, and is getting confoundedly jealous. How sulkily he eyes the loving pair! We should not be surprised now if he were to venture round, and wreak his vengeance by taking a sly nip at his rival's tail. It would all be of no use. The match is evidently made up. The twenty-pounder has popped the question and been accepted, and away swim the happy couple to spend their honeymoon at a neighbouring spawning bed.

This is no nonsense. The loves of fish are just as wayward and capricious as those of human beings, and (we are sorry to say it) the female salmon are not a whit more constant. As an example, take the following anecdote, which we had from the mouth of an experienced fisher on the Tay, John M'Farlane by name, who was nowise particular as to his mode of capture, but was, with rod, leister, or clipping hook, as expert as any man we have ever met upon the waters. Moreover we have no reason to suppose that he lied more immoderately than nine out of ten of his countrymen, and therefore have less hesitation in believing the truth of his statement. It is well known to fishers that salmon at the period of spawning come into very shallow water, where the male fish employs himself in working out long furrows in the gravel, into which the female fish deposits her spawn. These beds are usually situated at the top of some long pool, and are easily discernible by an experienced eye. John McFarlane, then, being treated to a glass of whiskey and solemnly interrogated, depones, that about or after the end of the season, he was walking along the bank of the river Lyon, a considerable tributary of the Tay, having and holding in his hand a long pole furnished with a clipping-hook for the purpose of taking salmon, as had been his use and wont for a number of years: that on arriving at a spawning bed, he then and there beheld two salmon, a male and a female, within reach of the aforesaid clipping-hook: that he firmly believes the female was in the act of depositing her spawn at the time that he, the deponent, made a stroke at the male salmon and succeeded in bringing him ashore. Interrogated why he preferred the one fish to the other? depones and answers, because the male was the cleaner fish of the two. Further depones, that the female salmon went down to the pool, and in a short while returned with another male fish. Depones, that he hooked him out also. Interrogated how he knew that it was the same female fish? depones and answers, that she was ken-speckle, having a visible mark on her back, proceeding, as he thinks, from the bite of an otter: that after he had taken out the second fish, the female went again to the pool, and returned with a third male. Depones, that he hooked him also; and further, that he hooked ten fish one after the other in the same manner: that on the eleventh time the female remained longer in the pool than usual, but that he, the deponent, being curious to see how many she could bring, waited for a considerable period: that at length she returned and brought with her a yellow trout of about four pounds in weight, and that the deponent hooked him also. Interrogated whether he hooked the female fish? depones and answers that he did. Interrogated whether he is not

ashamed of having done the same? depones and answers, that he is not, and that he considers he served her rightly for having led so many fish astray. Further depones, that he cannot write, but has no objections to take another glass of whiskey.

Such is the testimony of John M'Farlane, gent., as given to us, THE ORGANIST, in the course of last summer on the banks of the Tay during a fishing expedition, and we leave the scientific or unscientific reader to judge of it for himself: all we shall say is, that the circumstance of his having killed so many salmon with the clipping-hook alone need not excite any suspicion, since, during the spawning season, the salmon lie quite close to the shore, and seem to abandon for the time their usual habits of shyness and caution. Some of the habitual fishermen attain great skill in the use of the clipping-hook, and could at such a period easily strike every fish within their reach. The great choaker to us was the yellow trout, although it can no doubt be explained by those who favor the theory that sea-trout are a half-breed between the salmon (Salmo salar) and the river trout (Salmo ferio)—a theory which we beg to disclaim.

About the month of March the fry of the salmon issue from the spawning bed, and may then be seen in the act of exerting their first energies by shaking off the ovum which still adheres to their slender and transparent bodies. In another month they are swarming in the shallows, considerably increased in size, yet not easily distinguishable by any outward peculiarity from the young of the river and sea-trouts who frequent the same places with themselves. And now comes another question, which for years back has set naturalists together by the ears, and which, notwithstanding the confident assertions of Doctor Parnell, and Messrs. Yarrell and Wilson, is yet, we opine, as far from being solved as ever. In almost all the Scottish rivers (with some remarkable exceptions, to which we shall presently allude), there is to be found in great numbers, and especially at the earlier part of the year, a small fish of the salmon species, curiously mottled on the sides with blue marks as if indented by fingers, and in shape and appearance very closely resembling the samlet. This fish is found in such abundance in the rivers Clyde and Tay, that it is by no means an uncommon thing for an angler to fill his basket with them in the course of a forenoon. They rise at the smaller flies and the magot with great voracity, leaping repeatedly at the bait, and are, when one is fishing for larger trout, rather an incumbrance than otherwise. This fish is known in Scotland by the name of Par, and Mr. Yarrell, in his very able work on British Ichtyology, has given it the generic name of Salmo samulus, accounting it a separate species, and pointing out several minor distinctions between its anatomical construction and that of the samlet and young sea-trout. It is with the utmost deference that we venture to express a contrary opinion, and to maintain, in common with the best practical fishermen we know, that the par is no other than the young of the salmon.

This is not a new theory, for we remember to have heard it mentioned many years ago, although rather contemptuously. It was not until the following circumstance came within our own observation that we paid any particular attention to the subject; but since that time