19 JANUARY 1934, Page 17

A Mystery of the Clyde The Scottish Fishery Board and

their most able assistants— one of them a fine scholar—have been finding out a good many things about the way of a fish in the water. One of the oddities is that fish, especiallv sea trout, which have recently been under special observation, grow at very different rates in and about different rivers ; and the fact is not always due to the tale of fish-food in the river. It is found that fish from certain streams maintain this proportionate compariaoh of growth, even when they reach the sea, where the feeding grounds are common property. Perhaps the most salient of the discovered contrasts is between the fish that breed in the rivers south and north of the Clyde. The southern denizens are in general slow in growth and poor in physique alongside the fish, both salmon and sea trout, that come down to the Clyde from the northern rivers, though nothing in the rivers themselves seems to justify the difference in their alumni. The enquiry into the causes of such contrasts should lead to -discoveries of no little interest and importance in natural history.

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