CHANGE OF COLOUR IN FISH. 71 



before ; and hence the clouded aspect they exhibit. I 

 once threw a trout by accident, from a clear channel 

 stream over rny 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 chang- 

 ing 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 in 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 cou]> 

 de grace on the forehead with a wooden mallet, — ana- 



