THE PERCH 51 
fish which causes them to increase continuously in weight after 
death. The heaviest perch recorded, upon explicit and trust- 
worthy testimony, as having been taken in British waters, is 
that which Montagu, a trustworthy naturalist, affirms that he 
saw taken on a night-line in the Wiltshire Avon, weighing 
8 lb. Next comes Colonel Thornton, of Thornville Royal, 
in Yorkshire, who in 1784 made a sporting tour through 
Scotland as far as Strathspey. He took with him a regular 
camp train and equipage, just as any enterprising young man 
might do at the present day for an expedition to Africa or the 
Rockies. The gallant colonel shot and fished freely wherever 
he went, and published his experiences in a most entertaining 
book, entitled 4 Sporting Tour through the Northern Parts 
of England and great part of the Highlands of Scotland.* He 
describes his capture on a spinning bait of a perch in Loch 
Lomond weighing 7 lb., and there is no reason to suspect him 
of exaggeration in this matter, for his narrative throughout 
bears the stamp of truth. In his following was the well-known 
animal painter Garrard, whose brush, it is to be deplored, was 
not employed in portraying this noble fish, as it afterwards 
Was in painting the picture of the great pike of Loch Alvie, 
also killed by Colonel Thornton, which now hangs in the 
saloon of the Piscatorial Society in the Holborn Restaurant. 
Over certain other records of heavy perch there hangs a 
cloud of uncertainty, if not of suspicion. The bass, or sea- 
perch (Laérax lupus), whereof further mention will be made 
presently, indulges an inclination to ascend tidal rivers. It 
is a near relative of the common perch, and it has been 
surmised by Mr. Alfred Jardine, an experienced authority upon 
pike and perch fishing, that most of these monsters may be 
identified with the bass. Indeed, one so-called perch, weighing 
10} lb., was sent by the Birmingham and Midland Piscatorial 
Association to the International Fisheries Exhibition in 1883, 
and was proved upon examination to be a bass, or sea-perch. 
* London, 1804; second edition, 1896. 
