132 GREAT LAKE TROUT. 



He sometimes coshers with me ; and once a month I take a pipe with him, and we shot it 

 about for an hour together." The word Buddagh is said to mean a "big fat fellow." (See 

 Thompson's Natural History of Ireland, iv. p. 158.) 



I have never had an opportunity of tasting the flesh of S./erox, and can give, therefore, 

 no opinion as to its quality. The colour is said to be orange-yellow, and the flavour to be 

 coarse and indifferent. 



Like some other Salmonidcc the colour of this fish is found to vary ; I do not think, how- 

 ever, that there is a great difference in this respect in the case of individuals inhabiting the 

 same large lake ; but where they have been transferred from their natural habitations to small 

 and circumscribed ponds, then there is a marked difference in colouration. A specimen obligingly 

 sent to me by Mr. A. Scott, of Garrison, caught in Lough Melvin, was a handsomely marked 

 fish, as may be seen by the accompanying illustration, while another specimen, which I saw 

 and handled alive in October, 1878, taken out of a small stew in the occupation of Mr. John 

 Parnaby, of Troutdale, Keswick, was quite free from any purplish tint : the back and body 

 were yellowish brown with darker brown round spots, and the belly yellow with a slight tinge 

 of gold. This specimen had been caught in Derwentwater, and had been two years in this 

 little pond, in which weeds grew abundantly ; it was occasionally fed with chopped horse-flesh, 

 and was thin and in bad condition ; it was twenty-one inches in length. 



The following is a description of a young male fish I received from Lough Melvin in 

 October, 1878: — -Total length sixteen inches; greatest depth three inches and five eighths; 

 length of head four inches ; the maxillary one inch and five eighths, narrow, and extending 

 beyond the posterior orbit ; the praeoperculum is crescent-shaped, the descending portion 

 rounding itself off, with scarcely a trace of a lower limb. The pectoral fins in this specimen 

 are long and somewhat pointed, the length is two inches and three eighths, and is more than 

 the half of the distance of its base from that of the ventral ; the tail is emarginate ; the snout 

 is long ; eye long ; the whole aspect of the head giving the fish a fierce expression. The 

 colour of the back is dark purplish brown, becoming lighter purple on the sides above 

 lateral line, below this line the sides are silvery, the sides marked with numerous black and 

 brown reticulated spots ; there are spots on the gill-cover and on the dorsal fin, the gill-cover 

 slightly tinged with pale yellow ; the teeth are strong and sharp ; vomerine teeth in a single 

 series, and arranged in a zig-zag form ; these teeth are persistent, for in the specimen of a 

 head belonging to a fish which weighed twenty pounds, these vomerine teeth are well seen. 



The number of rays in the fins are 



Dorsal 13 — 14. 

 Pectoral 15. 

 Ventral 9. 

 Anal II. 



Mr. Alexander Scott, of the Hotel, Garrison, Belleek, Ireland, supplied the specimen from 

 which the drawing was made. 



