56 RODERICK DHU TROUT. 



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; fishmongers 

 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 ex- 

 hibit them to his admiring friends, and extract from 

 them the most approved of epithets and exclamations, 

 taking the praise bestowed 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 fisherman to 

 scoop up some of the channel with his landing net, 

 which proved upon inspection to be part of a stratum 

 of black flint. 



I can state farther, — what appears to me to be alto- 

 gether a curious circumstance. I had often observed 

 that the largest of those Trout which almost con- 

 tinually 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 preserve them from being 



