214 THE PRACTICAL FISHERMAN. 



The ordinary Salmo fario, when in season, is an exceedingly handsome 

 piece of water-going architecture. This is how Eonalds describes him : 

 " The back fin has a pale brown colour, with dark brown spots upon it ; 

 the others (including the tail parts) have a red tint. The colour of the 

 back when in perfect condition (which is generally in May, but in some 

 waters not until June), is usually a dark olive green studded with a 

 mixture of black and brownish spots. The sides are shaded off from the 

 olive to a greenish yellow studded with red spots ; the black spots gradu- 

 ally vanishing. Lower down the yellow tint approaches a salmon colour, 

 and the belly is nearly white, without any spots." I think my piscatorial 

 readers will agree with me that this is as precise as it is possible to 

 be. Out of season the fish is inclined to be dark, and its shape alters 

 markedly, becoming lank and meagre. 



Having described and generally remarked upon the common trout of 

 our brooks, and its superior brothers, the Colne, Wick, and Thames trout, 

 it now becomes necessary to advert to the other varieties of the brown 

 trout which have been noticed and commented on by our ichthyologists, 

 but which are not sufficiently distinct to warrant separation under new 

 generic titles. Sir W. Jardine is chiefly responsible for the detailed differ- 

 ence I am about to name, and although these distinctions unquestionably 

 exist, it may be borne in mind, as a fact of undeniable comprehensibility, 

 that they are not sufficient, when taken from a strictly scientific point of 

 view, to justify anyone in concluding that their significance indicates 

 anything more than " sports," or variations, for which geological strata, 

 climatic peculiarities, and other causes are directly responsible. This rule 

 has but few exceptions ; one of these occurs in the case of the deformed 

 trout of a small loch, called Lochdow, near Pitmain, in Inverness- 

 shire. "Their heads," says a writer in the seventh edition of the 

 "Encyclopaedia Britannica," in the article on angling, "are short and 

 round, and their upper jaws are truncated like that of a bulldog." Of 

 course, even this deformity is not sufficient to exact a new classification 

 of the fish. 



The varieties of trout described by Sir W. Jardine commence with 

 that which is found in Loch Craigie, the country round which is formed 

 of black and white granite. The colour of the water is a clear senna 

 brown, and mere limpid than that of any of the lochs of the same district. 

 The fish were said to be of good size and very symmetrical, small sized 

 head, and full arched back, and their colours were peculiar and beautiful. 

 The upper part was of a rich brown, the lower half and belly of a deep 

 golden orange, the spotting abundant but ill-defined, and often of a 

 cruciform shape ; the flesh very highly coloured. Couch remarks that in 

 the parish of Luxilian, in Cornwall, there are trout amid like surroundings 



