

How to obtain it. 277 



of growing trout in such situations that they have access to salt 

 water. 



In most trout there exists a tendency to diverge from the 

 original type, and yet on the other hand we find in very marked 

 and apparently distinct races, a considerable disposition to revert 

 again to the original type. This reversion to type is very marked 

 in the case of some birds and animals which have already been 

 referred to. In the trout it is so marked that the question as to 

 how many species we actually possess comes in and claims our 

 serious attention. We find that fresh-water forms become anadro- 

 mous, and also the reverse, viz., that sea-going forms become 

 land-locked, and that the most marked races exhibit strong 

 symptoms of reversion to original type, and all these facts lead us 

 to one point, and that is a common ancestry. Here we must 

 leave this deeply-interesting question. Future investigations will 

 no doubt throw a good deal of light on so important a subject. 

 In a few more years we shall know how trout behave themselves 

 in other parts of the world, as for instance, in South Africa and 

 the island of Ceylon. Already a commencement has been made 

 in both these latitudes, and we are hoping soon to be able to 

 report some results. Trout are introduced, and the future will 

 possibly develop some new and important facts concerning them. 



We know that, by judicious selection and inter-breeding, 

 races are improved and desirable varieties perpetuated, and we 

 know also how easy it is to lose the thread, as it were, of a pedigree 

 race by a little careless manipulation of the breeding stock. 

 There is endless scope for selection and improvement, the making 

 of cross-breeds, and of hybrids, and investigating the life histories 

 of some of the sterile forms that are occasionally met with in 

 Nature, and which are also easily produced by artificial means. i* * f 



Trout do not necessarily deposit ova every year. As a rule f 

 they do, but a few do not; that is to say, a trout occasionally 

 misses a year. There does not seem to be any hard and fast rule 

 by any means. Probably trout ought naturally to spawn every 

 year, but a fish which has been sickly or ill-fed, or that has got 

 injured in some way or other, proves an exception to the rule. 



Broken fins unite again, and those that have been lost are 

 sometimes reproduced, but they always show traces of having 



