292 ADDITIONAL NOTES. 



(On the Structure of Stomach of the Gillaroo Trout, page 54.) 



The author, in noticing the stomach of the gillaroo or 

 gizzard trout, remarks that it has been improperly compared 

 to a fowl's. According to Henry Watson and John Hunter, 

 who first described it, it differs from the stomach of the 

 common trout principally in the circumstance of its being 

 thicker. Hunter found the one he examined two-thirds thicker, 

 with an inner, fine, villous coat. Watson describes it as com- 

 posed of three coats, an internal, a middle, and an external one. 

 "The external," he states, "is a kind of peritoneal covering 

 common to the stomach, intestines, and other viscera. The 

 middle coat appears to be of a fibrous muscular texture, pretty 

 thick in flesh, stronger than in the salmon, and of a yellowish 

 colour. The internal coat has a rough but not rugous surface. 

 It is spongy and perhaps glandular, with a kind of honeycomb 

 texture and strong villi, a little similar to the internal appearance 

 of the gall bladder in the human subject." He adds that it will 

 not bear any comparison with the gizzard of birds of the galli- 

 naceous kind, which has powerful muscles with tendons, and a 

 thick horny inner lining in brief, a grinding apparatus. Hunter 

 and Watson's papers are in the Phil. Trans, for 1774 ; and in the 

 same volume and preceding them is one by Daines Barrington, 

 in which the peculiarity of the gillaroo trout is first noticed. 

 He says, " The first time I ever happened to hear of this singular 

 fish, was from an Irish judge, who being on the Connaught 

 circuit at Ballinrobe, in the county of Mayo, expressed his 

 incredulity with regard to their existence, but was obliged to 

 pay the common Irish wager of a rump of beef and a dozen of 

 claret, on three or four being produced the next day from a 

 neighbouring lake." From what he afterwards mentions, it 

 would appear that the stomach of this trout in Ireland was at 

 that time considered a delicacy, " white, and excellent eating." 

 He says, " I have been informed by Lord Louth, that he had 

 seen a small dish, consisting merely of such gizzards, at an Irish 

 table in Galway ; and I could corroborate this fact, was it neces- 

 sary, by the testimony of an Irish archbishop." In notes 

 appended to Harrington's paper, mention is made of a white. 



