8 risH AND FISHING IN SCOTLAND. 



a common trout irr its shape, its colouring, its dentition, is pro- 

 bably a salmon ; yet it has the teeth and robe of the trout ! 

 Mysterious fact, explicable only by the great minds of the earth, 

 by Newton, Goethe, Greolfroy ! It was you who first proclaimed 

 unity of the organization of all that lives. The salmon kind 

 form no exception to this great law ; when tiny and young they 

 all resemble each other, assuming with time the specific charac- 

 ters which mark their adult condition. Thus does the young 

 salmon gradually lay aside that elongated fin which connects 

 his formation with worlds past and gone ; next, the red spots 

 and cross-bars allying him with the river trout of both kinds ; 

 by and by a robe of silvery scales conceals all vestiges of his 

 early years ; and last, not least, the double row of teeth which 

 carried on the body of the vomer all but disappear, leaving 

 merely one or two, together with those on the fore part of the 

 vomer (the chevron), which few full-grown fresh-water trout 

 when grown, admitting their presence when young, retain.* 



But whether or not you may choose thus to wander back in 

 time, endeavouring to discover the unknown in the Past, and to 

 find its demonstration in the Present, you will not, I trust, imi- 

 tate old Izaak, who, living in London, and fishing all the rivers 

 about that centre, could coolly record in his " Complete Angler," 

 that " the Fordich trout," a good trout too, " was never known to 

 rise at an angle," and yet make not one journey to discover what 

 might be the reason of this ! Happy, contented Izaak ! you were 

 never troubled with the desire to discover the unknown in the 

 past nor in the present ; sufficient for you was the fact that it 

 is so. You were a linendraper, it is true ; but Franklin was a 

 printer, a working man. Nevertheless, it is pleasant to see what 

 a refreshing book may be written by one devoid of genius to 

 observe anything, but simply blessed with a love of nature suffi- 

 ciently strong to narrate what he felt and saw. Izaak wrote 

 two hundred years ago. 



* M. Valenciennes seems to think (for he is not very clear on this point) 

 that no adult trout ever has transverse vomerine teeth, or teeth on the 

 chevron. But in another part of his work he speaks of them as being "pen, 

 distinctes." I think I have seen them distinct in the full-grown trout, in 

 one species, at least. 



