60 DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SALMON FISHING 



produced by the agency of light, that these things 

 are become less startling. 



It is very certain that Trouts and Salmon are less 

 vivid in colour, and in fact more grey, when they 

 have been some time out of their element ; fish- 

 mongers throw water from time to time over their 

 fish, as well to preserve their colour as to keep them 

 fresh. I would recommend any one who wishes to 

 show his day's sport in the pink of perfection, to 

 keep his Trouts in a wet cloth, so that on his return 

 home he may exhibit them to his admiring friends, 

 and extract from them the most approved of 

 epithets and exclamations, taking the praise be- 

 stowed upon the fish as a particular compliment to 

 himself. 



Since our writing the above remarks, I have paid 

 more attention to the subject, and am enabled to 

 state that in one particular part of the river Chess, 

 I have been in the habit of taking Trouts of a darker 

 and greyer colour than those which I captured in 

 the other parts of this little stream ; and, observing 

 this to be invariably the case, I desired my fisher- 

 man to scoop up some of the channel with his land- 

 ing net, which proved upon inspection to be part of 

 a stratum of black flint. 



I can state farther what appears to me to be 

 altogether a curious circumstance. I had often 

 observed that the largest of those Trout which 

 almost continually lay under the hides, which were 

 constructed in the stream and covered with boards 

 being, in fact, large troughs open at the lower end 

 so as to admit the fish, and staked within so as to 



