OBSERVATIONS ON FISHES. 



EEL-POUT OR BURBOT.* 



EEL-POUTS, or burbots, as they are more generally 

 called in other parts of England, are common in 

 the Cam, and the navigable cuts communicating 

 with that river. In Reche Lode they are frequently 

 taken, where they sometimes attain a considerable 

 size. One brought to me from thence in May, 1829, 

 weighed three pounds four ounces and a half : its 

 length was two feet all but half an inch ; and its girth 

 exactly half its length, or nearly a foot. This indi- 

 vidual was looked upon by the fishermen as rather 

 larger than those which usually occur. 



The eel-pout is a fish hardly known in many 

 rivers; and this circumstance, connected with its 

 appearance and shape, which are a little forbidding 

 to those who see it for the first time, occasions with 

 some a prejudice against eating it. It is, however, 

 a very delicate fish at table ; the flesh firm and white, 

 and of agreeable flavour, most resembling that of the 

 common eel. 



A singularly coloured variety of the eel-pout was 



enough to inform me that it was an Ascaris, and probably the A. 

 obtusocaudata, which inhabits the stomach of the genus Saltnd ;t 

 but that, without inspecting male and female specimens, he was 

 not able to identify the species positively. He observed further, 

 that the species of Ascaris which reside in the stomachs of fish, 

 not unfrequently make their way thence to the gills, as in the in- 

 stance above spoken of. 

 * Lota vulgar is, Jen. 



t Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist. vol. xiii. p. 172. 



