SIZE OF TKOUT. 19 



naglan trout have been chronicled in works on 

 natural history. Mr. Yarrell describes one of 

 twenty-five pounds " that was captured on the 

 llth of January, 1822, in a little stream ten feet 

 wide, branching from the Avon, at the back of 

 Castle Street, Salisbury." It is, however, by no 

 means clear to us that these extraordinary speci- 

 mens were all really common trout, for the evidence 

 is doubtful in some cases, owing to the uncertainty 

 about the ability of their captors to distinguish 

 between the large migratory and other species. 

 But an instance has come under our own know- 

 ledge which cannot admit of dispute, for the water 

 in which were captured the specimens of which 

 we shall speak is miles from the sea, and has not 

 the slightest communication with it through any of 

 its numerous feeders. We refer to the reservoir 

 of the canal at Chard, in Somersetshire, a piece 

 of water covering some seventy acres, in which 

 common trout weighing six and eight pounds 

 were taken with the net within two years after 

 its construction ; and one was found dead on the 

 bank, about the same period, which weighed 

 more than a dozen pounds. These fish must have 

 been supplied from the neighbouring tributary 

 brooks, in which a trout above six inches long is 

 perhaps never seen ; and they afford additional 

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