330 ADDITIONAL NOTES. 



sea trout, does not mean to attach any importance to 

 this idea. The fish differs so little from the common 

 trout, that it may be questioned, whether it is not more 

 entitled to the chaCracter of a variety than of a species. 

 In many rivers on the Continent, the author has seen 

 small trout with olive or brown marks, like those of 

 the British par; and a friend informs him, that he 

 has caught fish of the same kind in the streams con- 

 nected with the Lake of Geneva. In rivers flowing 

 into the Danube, these small fish are very common ; 

 but, as well as he remembers, their marks are pale, or 

 yellowish brown, or olive, and not dark or blue like 

 those of our par. The salmon does not belong to any 

 of these localities, but the hucho haunts the tributary 

 streams of the Danube. The smelts, or young of the 

 salmo hucho, and sea trout, and lake trout, are all 

 distinguished by the uniform dark colour of the back, 

 and the silvery whiteness of the belly. He does not 

 remember to have seen any of the streaked, or par 

 varieties of trout in rivers, in which there was only one 

 species, or variety of large salmo. The mottled colour 

 of the skin is, he thinks, the strongest argument in 

 favour of this little fish being from a cross of two 

 varieties or races, which may be the case, and yet the 

 fish be capable of breeding, and gaining this character 

 of a peculiar variety ; and he supposes different kinds 

 of pars may be produced by crosses of the sea trout, 

 the hucho, the lake trout, with the river trouts, or per- 

 haps of the salmon, and this would account for their 

 great numbers, and the various tints of the marks on 

 their sides. If the hucho, as he believes, generally 

 spawns late in the winter, it may sometimes meet with 

 trout spawning at the same time. He has seen salmon 

 and trout in the Tweed in a similar state of maturity 



