NATURAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SALMONID&. 165 



Thames is, of course, one of the best known, and here fish up 

 to ten pounds or twelve pounds weight are by no means rare. 

 Indeed, I have before me an authentic record of a trout, taken 

 in the Thames, which weighed twenty-three pounds and a half, 

 and which is now, or was some years ago, preserved at the 

 cottage of George Keen, fisherman, of Weybridge. This fish 

 was taken at Shepperton Weir, if I remember rightly, with a 

 spinning bait. At any rate the specimen is, no doubt, still 

 extant to bear testimony in favour of its own authenticity. 

 I have referred to another at Laleham, which weighed twenty- 

 one pounds, and one of sixteen pounds and a half was taken 

 by Mr. John Harris, landlord of the ' Lincoln Arms,' Weybridge, 

 at Laleham, in 1822. 



Many other English waters besides the Thames produce 

 very large trout. I have caught some heavyish specimens 

 myself in the Hampshire Avon, above Ringwood, and at Herd- 

 cott House, near Salisbury, there is preserved the skin of a 

 trout taken from a tributary running through that town, which 

 weighed twenty-five pounds, and measured four feet two inches 

 and a half in length, its girth being two feet one inch. 



This leviathan is probably the fish alluded to in the ' Trans- 

 actions of the Linnean Society' as being caught on the nth 

 of January, 1822, in a brook some ten feet wide at the back of 

 Castle Street, Salisbury. 



' A trout which weighed twenty-seven pounds was landed a few 

 days ago by an angler in Lord Normanton's Somerley water in the 

 Hants Avon. This exceptionally fine fish was despatched as a 

 present to the Speaker.' World, July 10, 1889. 



Lord Craven had some years ago a fresh-water trout of 

 seventeen pounds from his stews in Berkshire. The trout had 

 been known in the stew for eight years. In the neighbourhood 

 of Downton on the Avon, a trout was caught with the fly by a 

 Mr. Bailey which weighed fourteen pounds ; and in a small 

 tributary of the Trent, at Drayton Manor, one was taken ex- 

 ceeding in weight twenty-one pounds. A portrait of this fish 

 is still in the possession of the family of the late Sir Robert 

 PeeL A male fresh-water non-migratory trout ofahirty pounds 



