Dr. A. Gunther on the British Charrs. 233 



1807. TuRTON follows Donovan, and evidently has examined the 

 Torgoch, as he gives the correct number of the dorsal rays, viz. 

 thirteen. The statements of the different authors, especially of the 

 earlier, with regard to the fin-rays, can be used only with great cau- 

 tion, — first, because they had only partly recognized the value of that 

 character ; and secondly, because they counted them in different 

 ways, frequently omitting the small rays in front of the fins. 



1812. The first definite notice of the occurrence of a Charr-like fish 

 in Ireland appears to be due to Dubourdieu, who, in his * History 

 of the County of Antrim' (vol. i. p. 119), in a list of the fishes of 

 Lough Neagh, enumerates the Whiting, which by a friend of the 

 author, Mr. Templeton, is declared to be the S. alpinus. A rough 

 drawing is added. As the description does not give any specific 

 characters, we are left in doubt about the correctness of the determi- 

 nation. It is probable that the Whiting of Lough Neagh is now 

 extinct. 



Thompson* says that, when visiting Lough Neagh in 1834, he 

 was assured by the fishermen that they had not known of any of those 

 Whitings being taken in that lake for at least ten years previously. 

 This is confirmed by R. Patterson, Esq., of Belfast, in a letter ad- 

 dressed to me, in which he states that the Charr " has been believed 

 to be extinct in that lake for more than thirty years.*' Therefore 

 the question whether the Whiting of Lough Neagh was identical with 

 one of the other species, or whether it was a distinct species, will re- 

 main unsolved. Surely, if any group of fishes requires particular care 

 in collecting and preserving its representatives at different localities, 

 it is that of the Charrs, which, confined to very limited localities, and 

 extremely susceptible to the changes of their element, are exposed to 

 the danger of easy destruction : the Torgoch of Llanberris disappears 

 for a series of years, (as it is said) in consequence of the poisonous 

 fluids carried down from the copper-mines of the neighbourhood ; 

 the Charr of Lough Neagh becomes extinct, from reasons unknown. 

 We are afraid there are other similar instances, but unrecorded in 

 natural history. 



1834. Agassiz, engaged in the examination of some of the Conti- 

 nental Salmonidce, and having compared them with those in Great 

 Britain, declared, at the meeting of the British Association of that 

 year, that the Charrs of England and Ireland, the Ombre chevalier 

 of the Lake of Geneva, and all the different Charr-like fishes of 

 Sweden, Switzerland, and all the southern parts of Germany were 

 one and the same species — or that S. umbla, L., S. salvelinus, L., S. 

 alpinusy L., and S. salmarinus, L., were merely synonymousf. 



Heckel already has shown, with regard to the Swiss representatives 

 of Agassiz's S. umblaX, that two very different species are comprised 

 in it, different in the size of the scales, in the shape of the body, in 

 the coloration, and, according to Rapp's researches, in the number of 



♦ Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1841, vi. p. 448. 



t Report of the Fourth Meeting of the British Association, at Edinburgh, p. 622. 



J Reisebericht, p. 91. 



