CHANGE OF COLOUE IN FISH. 51 



threw a trout, by accident, from a clear channel stream 

 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 hhn 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 T 

 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 acci- 

 dental 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 coup de grace 

 on the forehead with a wooden mallet, — analogous to 



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