text:  The rapidity with which the two-year-old parr are converted into smolts and the timid habits of the new-hatched fry which render them almost entirely invisible during the first few months of their existence --these two circumstances combined have no doubt induced the erroneous belief that the silvery smolts were the actual produce of the very season in which they are first observed in their migratory dress: that is that they were only a few weeks old instead of being upwards of two years