178 FISHING GOSSIP. 



greater advantage than the native ones. There are, 

 however, two genera, to which this similarity of the 

 fish fauna of Great Britain with that of the Continent 

 and America does not extend viz. river charrs and 

 silures. There is a magnificent kind of the former 



<j 



genus in the Danube, a fish well known to all the 

 readers of the Field, under the name of huchen* If 

 the efforts to restore the Thames to the number of 

 salmon rivers should fail, it would be an attempt 

 worthy of the Acclimatisation Society to introduce 

 the huchen into it, as it does not go down to the sea, 

 and would of itself fairly compensate for the gudgeons 

 and roach which form its principal food. Moreover, 

 its introduction by means of artificial hatching would 

 be the best way of convincing those who with Von 

 Boer f contend that artificial impregnation produces 

 sickly fry with the blood-vessels incompletely de- 

 veloped. 



The silures are represented in America by several 

 species, but none of them attain to the size of the wels, 

 nor are they esteemed in their own country as an 



* The question has been discussed whether there exist charrs 

 passing all their life in rivers ; the huchen is an instance of such a 

 fish, as it is proved by its zoological characters to belong to that 

 group ; other examples could be mentioned from Canada and the 

 rivers west of the Rocky Moiin tains. 



t The great natural philosopher of St. Petersburg, who may be 

 called the inventor of artificial inpregnation of fish-eggs, and whose 

 observations on this subject are invaluable. 



