OSSEOUS FISHES. 567 



usually met with. The whitling of the Tweed, grayling of Tay, and 

 tinnock of North and South Esk, are young sea and bull-trout, 

 abounding in March and April, when a sportsman will land fifty or 

 sixty daily, weighing from one quarter to a pound. Trout flesh 

 varies in colour from a clear white to a dark red; the North Esk 

 red trout is most esteemed. The best run from a pound and a half 

 to three pounds. The burn-trout is always red, and has been killed 

 as heavy as thirty pounds. The herring-trout, never found in 

 English rivers, and only caught on our coast by herring-trawlers, is 

 a special favourite : may it not be the whitling of the French rivers ? 

 In all other species colour varies with locality, and cannot be ac- 

 counted for. 



We have seen how rapidly the young salmon increase in size in 

 the sea. During this stage of existence the salmon, being a carni- 

 vorous fish, rapidly develops itself from the grilse to the adult state. 

 From a careful analysis made by Dr, Wilson Johnston of the Bengal 

 army, it appears that there is no recorded instance of healthy salmon 

 partaking of herring or sand-lances ; the tape-worm and other con- 

 ditions of perverted appetite persisting in all. Tape-worm is most 

 common in the hybrid Norwegian, and explains the reason why 

 Clupeadse are sometimes found in their stomachs. Should the fish 

 not be charged with spawn, it will shortly return to sport among 

 the dancing waves; but if matured for breeding, at which period 

 the female shows a dirty brown hue, and the male a black, 

 they mate, choose a spot for the salmon nest, and there deposit 

 myriads of ova. The longer a salmon continues in the river the 

 duller their colour becomes ; the flavour is greatly depreciated ; so 

 that Izaac Walton's statement, that " the further they get from 

 the sea they be both fatter and better," is dead against our daily 

 experience. 



During the period of river residence salmon never feed. It avails 

 not to argue that fear acts as an emetic and empties the stomach; 

 the incontestable fact remains that the entire gastro-intestinal tract 

 ab ore ad ano is in ninety-nine per cent, devoid of any trace of food. 

 Juvenile experience on the part of the fish, recurring as a phantasm, 

 causes them to snap at a shining artificial minnow or a gaudy fly, 

 but they never rise out of the water ; the bait must dip to them, and 

 when hooked they shake the intruder as a terrier does a rat. If salmon 



