286 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
fish is a source of exasperation to trout-fishers in southern 
English streams where trout are large and wary, and must 
be approached with as much nicety as a red stag. It is 
certainly provoking, when you have managed on a May 
morning to lodge a red quill delicately above a rising fish, 
and it floats down jauntily cocked, as natural as may be— 
it is provoking, I say, when the line tightens bravely, and 
you prepare to do battle with a lusty trout, to find that you 
are fast in a grayling. There were little to choose between 
the two fish, if both came in season at once; but the grayling 
departs from the habit common to most of the salmon kind 
by spawning with coarse fish in April and May. At that 
season it is tarnished in hue and slimy to the touch, a 
disagreeable object which nobody wants in his basket. 
Far different is the appearance of the grayling after it has 
recovered from the exhaustion of reproduction, which, in the 
case of large fish, is not till the month of August. It is 
then a truly beautiful creature, with large scales giving the 
grey sides a delicate reticulation. The head is brown, the 
cheeks yellowish, and the under-parts silvery, but there is an 
indescribable purplish bloom all over the surface of the body, 
shot with golden reflections. The sides of the head and 
shoulders are firmly spotted with black ; spots and bars also 
adorn the dorsal, sometimes the caudal, fin. 
The flesh of the grayling is white, firm, and sweet, when 
in good condition. It is essentially a fish of clear water, 
being in that respect far more fastidious than the trout, which 
does not quarrel with a moderate amount of sewage pollution. 
I have never been able to detect the odour of thyme which 
the grayling has been supposed to emit when freshly caught, 
and to which it owes its title ZAymallus. In this country 
I believe grayling are never found in lakes, but they grow 
to a larger size than those of Scandinavia. In English streams 
they commonly attain a weight of from 1 Ib. to 3 lb., and 
occasionally are heard of over 4 lb. 
