11 



The largest common river tront, of whicli I have ever heard, 

 was taken in a small stream branching from the Avon, at Salis- 

 bury, in 1822. Its weight was twenty-five pounds. 



Deformities are not common among fishes. But there is one 

 curioos malformation in the trout — the upper jaw is much short- 

 ened, and very obtuse. There is a specimen of one, thus imperfect, 

 in the Museum of the Zoological Society; and in 1852, the 

 Rev. Mr. Hill caught one in the ^Vye; which he kindly gave to 

 me. I intended it for the Museum of the Philosophical Institution 

 of Hereford ; but have never been able to recover it from the 

 hands of the party who was to preserve it. As I have said 

 already, that higher classes, in their early stage, pass through the 

 forms of their inferiors ; this shortened upper jaw of the trout is 

 an example of an arrest in its progress to the perfect state, at a 

 point which marks the completed organization of the lamprey — a 

 grade preceding the bony fishes. What is always permanent 

 in the lower animals, becomes occasionally so in the higher, and 

 is then a deformity. 



Though Ichthyological monstrosities are rare, the trout is by 

 no means a solitary instance. The perch has been taken with the 

 back greatly elevated, and the tail contorted. It is so found in 

 some of the lakes of the Xorth of Europe ; as well as in Lyn 

 Raithlyn, in Merionethshire ; and I once took one, thus deformed, 

 in a small brook in Picardy. Another very remarkable mal- 

 formation has been noticed in both the perch and carp ; a female 

 roe on one side, and a male roe on the other side of the same fish. 



The grayling is the only other of the salmon family, which 

 claims to be a Herefordshire fish ; and considering its beautiful 

 shape — the sport it aflords — its excellence as an edible — and its 

 best season being in the autumn and winter, when the rest of its 

 genus are out of condition, it is extraordinary it should not be 

 more widely disseminated. In the Monnow, for instance, where, 

 though trout are abundant, they are of poor quality, I imagine 

 the grayling would flourish ; for it delights in rivers with a 

 gravelly bottom, and an alternation of gentle stream and pool — 

 the smallness of all its fins, except the dorsal, depriving it of 

 power to stem a heavy and rapid water. 



