CHANGE OF COLOUR IN FISH 55 



over my head into a peat-moss pool behind me, 

 which had no communication with the running water; 

 and after a few months I caught him as black and 

 portly as possible. Such facts certainly prove, to 

 my own satisfaction at least, that trouts do not 

 vary in original and indelible type so much as is 

 generally imagined. In regard to what follows upon 

 the changing colours of fish when in the act of 

 dying, I cannot speak with the same certainty ; but 

 either my eyes deceived me very much (and at the 

 period of life to which I refer they were pretty 

 good), or I observed the following phenomena : I 

 usually killed my fish, not by breaking their necks, 

 as is now generally the method adopted, but by 

 slapping their heads against a stone, the edge of my 

 shoe, or the butt of my fishing-rod ; and even when 

 a boy I was sensible of some change which took 

 place in the colour of the dying victim. A kind of 

 streamer, or phosphorus light, seemed to shoot along 

 the quivering flesh, and only ceased with the life of 

 the trout. In salmon I should think the fact is still 

 more manifest. The salmon fishery at the Eden 

 afforded me an accidental proof of this. Some 

 summers ago I was in the habit of bathing near the 

 stakes at ebb tide, when the salmon were removed 

 from the nets. I had a pleasure hi walking into the 

 inside of the nets, and seeing the finely-shaped 

 living salmon' plunging about, and still in their 

 native element. Upon securing the fish, the men 

 were in the habit of giving them the coup de grace 

 on the forehead with a wooden mallet analogous 

 to my fishing-rod butt ; and at each successive 



