CHAR— BRITISH, BREEDING AND HABITAT. 245 



of a visit paid by Dr. Leitcli, of Keswick, in 1850, to inspect the " Char Dub," as 

 it is called, in the river Liza : — " We went down the pastures by the little river 

 side, circled by the grand snowy mountains ; the pillar, the steeple, red pike, and 

 the dark walls of abrupt high land that shut in the gloaming steel mirror of 

 Ennerdale lake. About thi'ee hundred yards above the lake, where a stone wall 

 runs down to the river Liza, is a long 'dub' or pool, one part of which is very 

 deep. This is the famous 'Ennerdale Char Dub.' The fish had not yet gone 

 down (the '25th of November), and we saw the bottom of the pool blackened with 

 them. Many thousands certainly were there, and in a proper light the gleam and 

 twinkle of their multitudinous white-edged fins was a pretty and singular 

 spectacle. As they refused the red rag fastened, for want of hooks, to a pin, and 

 with a thread flung by means of a fishing rod into the midst of them, we took 

 means to drive them downward, and by-and-by procured two or thi-ee for the 

 artist (Mr. Pettitt), who had remained at Buttermere to paint one of the char of 

 that lake. Small as they looked in the water, they yet were occasionally as large 

 as the Buttermere char. One or two were eight ounces, king fish, most resplen- 

 dently coloured, red and gold bellied, fins with a pink shade in the centre, shaded 

 into a brown ash hne, and edged with pearl colour, as they lay on the grass fresh 

 from the stream — a most brilliant and elegant creature, wanting, however, the 

 regular white spots, ' bedropt in hail,' which add so much to the beauty of the 

 Buttermere char. On only one fine king fish I observed some dusky red spots 

 below the median line. Their form is more like that of the Welsh than Crummock 

 char, not so ronnded in the outline. The ronual or she fish, were much smaller 

 and poorer in colour than those of Buttermere ; they were of an ashy, greenish 

 hue, almost the colour of the robin redbreast's back, deepened by dark shadowy 

 marks. They seemed alnaost all to have finished spawning; and, no doubt, in a few 

 days will descend to the lake. In that dub must be deposited millions of ova ; 

 and it perhaps might be worth the while of the owner to preserve them by means 

 of a dam, or tempoi'ary breakwater of any kind above, from being washed out of 

 the ' ruds ' by floods, while a grating placed below might keep away pike or other 

 fish likely to swallow the ova or young before they reach the lake." 



Diseases and causes of destruction. — These are similar to what are perceived in 

 trout, except that it seems to be a more delicate fish and requires deeper water, 

 as will be referred to under the American char, Salmo fontinalis. UUswater, 

 forty years ago, was the best angling lake in the north of England. From the 

 middle of April to the middle of September, unless the elements were decidedly 

 adverse, the angler might be sure of a fair basket, cither with the fly or with the 

 minnow. Then the fishing became very bad about I860. For many years prior 

 to 1860 the Glenridding mines were worked without producing any striking injury 

 to the fish, except to char, which, according to the best evidence attainable, 

 spawned principally in Glenridding Beck. About I860 a weir was placed across 

 the Eamont, a little above its junction with the Lowther. Trout used to descend 

 the Eamont in order to spawn in the Dacre and Lowther. This weir prevented 

 those which went up the Lowther returning-, and it was noticed that after that 

 period the trout in that river increased rapidly. About this time an increase from 

 the lead mines of twenty-five per cent, of debris, crushed and pounded rock, was 

 discharged into the lake. Dead skellies, rarely seen, were after this often found 

 on the shore and char appear to be extinct. 



Habitat. — In Norway the red char lives from a sea level up to 600 metres 

 above it: in the S.E. portions of the country it is rare, in West Norway more 

 common and captured in large numbers with a fly. Its flavour varies as greatly 

 as does that of the trout, and it appears to thrive best in lakes where the tem- 

 perature is somewhat uniform, without bottom springs and not having too large 

 an amount of brook-water flowing in. It extends to Great Britain and Ireland, 

 France, Southern Germany, and in the clear lakes of the Alps of Upper Austria, 

 Tyrol, Bavaria, Switzerland, also in the Carpathian lakes up to 6000 feet above 

 the sea. 



The Orkneys, at Hoy and Hellier, also being occasionally captured in Loch 

 Stennes, and three were obtained in Waas, in 1832 (W. Baikie) : also from North 



