60 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



firmed by Gesncr, a writer of good credit ; and Mcrcator says,* 

 the trouts that are taken in the Lake of Geneva, are a great part 

 of the merchandise of tliat famous city. And you are further 

 to know, tliat there be certain waters, that breed trouts remarka- 

 ble both for their number and smalhiess. I know a little brook 

 in Kent, that breeds them to a number incredible, and you may 

 take them twenty or forty in an hour ; but none greater than 

 about the size of a gudgeon ; there are also in divers rivers, es- 

 pecially that relate to, or be near to the sea, as Winchester, or 

 the Thames about Windsor, a little trout called a samlet or 

 skegger-trout, — in both which places I have caught twenty or 

 forty at a standing, — that will bite as fast and as freely as min- 

 nows ; these be by some taken to be young salmons,"]" but in those 

 waters they never grow to be bigger than a herring. 



as attaining thirty pounds weight. The lake trout of this country are 

 often much heavier. At the Falls of St. Mary, Columbia River, trout are 

 taken vs heavy as sixty pounds. Cox (Col. Rnrr, ii., 263) speaks of one 

 wliich weighed ninety pounds. Dr. Mitchell described Jmir. Am. Accu- 

 demy of Nat. Sciences, Vol. L, p. 410-12) a great trout of the /akes, 

 which from the color of the flesh he named salmo amethystus, that, ac- 

 cording to reports, grows to a hundred and twenty pounds weight, more 

 than six feet long. A fine test of a cool hand, with a single gut ! 



The Milwaukie Sentinel (Sept. 21, 1S4G), says : " A friend of ours just 

 returned from Fort Washington, tells us that he saw a little shaver, eight 

 or nine years old, there fishing in the lake, who hooked a fish so large that 

 it became doubtful whether the boy would go into the lake or tlie fish come 

 out of it. Finally the youthful disciple of Walton landed a famous lake 

 trout. Bets were made as to which was the heaviest, the captive or the 

 captor. The scales showed the boy to weigh forty-six pounds, the fish 

 forty."— .^wj. Ed. 



* Gerard Mercator, a famous Flemish mathematician, geographer, and 

 theologian. He wrote many books, and died in 1591. Walton is again 

 quoting at tliird hand. — Am. Ed. 



t The reader will find in Yarrell's British Eishes many interesting obser- 

 vations on (jueries similar to this, and in Scrope's Days afid JMghfs of 

 Salmon Fishing (a most sumptuous and able work), a long series of care- 

 ful exporinients on the breeding and interbreeding of the several species. 

 The account is too long to extract, and too j)articular to be abridged, but 

 goes far to show tliat the dillerent varieties of the salmo are nearer rela- 

 tives than has been generally thought, even by the most observant natural- 

 ists. — Am. Ed. 



