FLESH AND WEIGHT OF TKOUT. 57 



The fisliermeii of that districtj ou the hike, assert, I under- 

 stand, positively that this is not the case ; but of course their 

 opinion is utterly valueless, being founded on some such admi- 

 rable reason as that the Brook Trout never grows to be above 

 five or six pounds ; meaning only that they have never seen 

 what they take to be one over that average. Just in the same 

 manner, a person used to take a fish only in the small mountain 

 brooks of Maine, New Hampshire, or Vermont, might tell you 

 quite as plausibly, quite as positively, and quite as truthfully — 

 so far as his miserable experience of truth goes — that the Brook 

 Trout never grows to be above half a pound — nor does it in his 

 waters. 



The Common Trout of England {Sahno Fario), which is so 

 closely connected with our Brook Trout {Sahno Fontinalis), as 

 to be constantly mistaken for it by casual observers, is con- 

 tinually taken in the larger rivers, especially the Thames, and 

 in some of the Irish waters, from ten to fifteen pounds in 

 weight. Mr. Yarrel, when preparing his " British Fishes," had a 

 minute before him of six Trout taken in the Thames, above 

 Oxford, by minnow-spinning, which weighed together fifty- 

 four pounds, the largest weighing thirteen pounds ; and one is 

 recorded in the Transactions of the Linnsean Society as having 

 been taken on the 1st of Januarj^, 1823, in a little stream 

 ten feet Avide, branching from the Avon at the back of Castle- 

 street, Salisbury, which on being taken out of the Avater was 

 found to weigh twenty-five pounds. 



These instances, which are beyond dispute, in relation to a 

 species so closely related to our fish as the Sahno Fario, render 



