The Harvest of the Sea / A contribution to the natural and economic history of the British food fishes

by James Glass Bertram

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 while 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. As a salmon only stays, as is popularly supposed, a very short time in the salt water, and as it is one of the quickest swimming fishes we have, so that it is able to reach a distant river in a very short space of time, it is most desirable that 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.

The mere facts in the biography of the salmon are not very numerous; it is the fiction and mystery with which the life of this particular fish has been invested by those ignorant of its history that has made it a greater object of interest than it would otherwise have become. This will be obvious as I briefly trace the amount of controversy and state the arguments which have been expended on the three divisions of its life.

The Parr Controversy.—None of the controversies concerning the growth of the salmon have been so hotly carried on or have proved so fertile in argument as the parr dispute. At certain seasons of the year, most notably in the months of spring and early summer, our salmon streams and their tributaries become crowded, as if by magic, with a pretty little fish, known in Scotland as the parr, and in England as the brandling, the peel, the samlet, etc. The parr was at one time so wonderfully plentiful, that farmers and cottars who resided near a salmon river used not unfrequently, after filling the family frying-pan, to feed their pigs with the dainty little fish! Countless thousands were annually killed by juvenile anglers, and even so lately as twenty years ago it never occurred either to country gentlemen or their farmers that these parr were young salmon. Indeed, the young of the salmon, as then recognised, was only known as a smolt or smout. Parr were thought, as I have already said, to be distinct fish of the minor or dwarf kind. Some large-headed anglers, however, had their doubts about the little parr, and naturalists found it difficult to procure specimens of the fish with ova or milt in them. Dr. Knox, the anatomist, asserted that the parr was a hybrid belonging to no particular species of fish, but a mixture of many; and it is curious enough that although this fish was declared over and over again to be a separate species, no one ever found a female parr containing roe. The universal exclamation of naturalists for many a long year was always: It is a quite distinct species, and not the young of any larger fish. The above drawing represents a parr, the engraving being exactly half the size of life.

PARR ONE YEAR OLD.
Half the natural size.

This “distinct-species” dogma might have been still prevalent, had not the question been taken in hand and solved by practical men. Before mentioning the experiments of Shaw and Young, it will be curious to note the varieties of opinion which were evoked during the parr controversy, which has existed in one shape or another for something like two hundred years. As a proof of the difficulty of arriving at a correct conclusion amidst the conflict of evidence, I may cite the opinion of Yarrell, who held the parr to be a distinct fish. “That the parr,” he says, “is not the young of the salmon, or, indeed, of any other of the large species of Salmonidæ, as still considered by some, is sufficiently obvious from the circumstance that parr by hundreds may be taken in the rivers all the summer, long after the fry of the year of the larger migratory species have gone down to the sea.” Mr. Yarrell also says, “The smolt or young salmon is by the fishermen of some rivers called ‘a laspring;’” and explains, “The laspring of some rivers is the young of the true salmon; but in others, as I know from having had specimens sent me, the laspring is really only a parr.” Mr. Yarrell further states the prevalence of an opinion “that parrs were hybrids, and all of them males.” Many gentlemen who would not admit that parr were salmon in their first stage have lived to change their opinion.

My friend Mr. Robert Buist, the intelligent and very obliging conservator of the Stormontfield breeding-ponds, is one of the gentlemen who now finds, from the results of most accurate experiments conducted under his own personal superintendence, that he was in error in holding the parr to be a distinct fish. A very eminent living naturalist, who has now seen all the stages of the question, said at one time that the parr had no connection whatever with the migratory salmon; and also that “males are found so far advanced as to have the milt flow on being handled; but at the same time, and indeed all the females which I have examined, had the roe in a backward state, and they have not been discovered spawning in any of the shallow streams or lesser rivulets, like the trout.” Such extracts could be multiplied to almost any extent, but I can only give one more, and it is from the same writer. After minutely describing the anatomy of the fish, he thus sums up: “In this state, therefore, I have no hesitation in considering the parr not only distinct, but one of the best and most constantly marked species we have.”

The first person who “took a thought about the matter”—i.e. as to whether the parr was or was not the young of the salmon—and arrived at any solid conclusion, was James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who, in his usual eccentric way, took some steps to verify his opinions. He had, while herding his sheep, many opportunities of watching the fishing-streams, and, like most of his class, he wielded his fishing-rod with considerable dexterity. While angling in the tributaries of some of the Border salmon-streams he had often caught the parr as it was changing into the smolt stage, and had, after close observation, come to the conclusion that the little parr was none other than the infant salmon. Mr. Hogg did not keep his discovery a secret, and the more his facts were controverted by the naturalists of the day the louder became his proclamations. He had suspected all his life that parr were salmon in their first stage. He would catch a parr with a few straggling scales upon it; he would look at this fish and think it queer; instantly he would catch another a little better covered with silver scales, but all loose, and not adhering to the body. Again he would catch a smolt, manifestly a smolt, all covered with the white silver scales, yet still rather loose upon its skin, and these would come off in his hand. On removing these he found the parr, with the blue finger marks below the new scales; and that these were young salmon then became as manifest to the shepherd as that a lamb, if suffered to live, would become a sheep. Wondering at this, he marked a great number of the lesser fish, and offered rewards (characteristically enough of whisky) to the peasantry to bring him any fish that had evidently undergone the change predicted by him. Whenever this conclusion was settled in his mind, the Shepherd at once proclaimed his new-gained knowledge. “What will the fishermen of Scotland think,” said he, “when I assure them, on the faith of long experience and observation, and on the word of one who can have no interest in instilling an untruth into their minds, that every insignificant parr with which the Cockney fisher fills his basket is a salmon lost?” These crude attempts of the impulsive shepherd of Ettrick—and he was hotly opposed by Mr. Buist, now of Stormontfield—were not without their fruits; indeed they were so successful as quite to convince him that parr were young salmon in their first stage.