262 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 



in weight ? Or I will ask him to accompany me to Romsey 

 on the Test. There he shall see under a bridge below the 

 town a deep pool, just within the park of Broadlands, whence 

 every year are taken one or two enormous trout, apparently 

 identical with the so-called ferox of Loch Treig and other 

 Highland lakes. Now in the Test there is no question of 

 a different species. These Romsey monsters were once modest 

 little parr-marked brook-trout. Favoured by fortune or 

 superior mettle, they have happened to take up their abode 

 in this pool below the bridge, where they thrive prodigiously 

 on the offal which comes to them abundantly from one of the 

 town sewers. Like ferox, they disdain the artificial fly, but 

 seize a prawn, a minnow, or even a good lob-worm dangled 

 conveniently before their noses. I have seen one so taken 

 in this pool weighing 1 1-| lb. ; as I write I have before my 

 eyes the stuffed skin of another which weighed 8 lb., as well 

 as that of a third of 6 lb., which took my floating sedge in 

 most gentlemanly manner in a shallower pool a little way down 

 the same river. 



Now, any one of these trout, had it been taken with a 

 minnow in profound Loch Treig, would have been hailed as 

 Salmo ferox. In a lake not five-and-twenty miles in a crow- 

 flight from Loch Treig Loch Arkaig, to wit I once went 

 afloat at 3 p.m., and returned at seven with five trout, 

 weighing respectively iy-1- lb., 8 lb., 5 lb., i\ lb., and 2 lb. 

 Having been taken by a spinning-bait, a small burn-trout, 

 they were all indubitable ferox, of course ; but who would 

 have so termed the three smaller fish had they been taken 

 with the fly? 



Again, if Salmo ferox is a distinct species, how are the 

 young and adolescent forms to be distinguished from the 

 common trout of any lake ? Nobody has ever attempted to 

 point that out ; yet it is surely incumbent upon those who 

 claim these great trout as a separate species to explain what 

 they are like before they become great. The simplest expla- 



