THE PERCH 



51 



fish which causes them to increase continuously in weight after 

 death. The heaviest perch recorded, upon explicit and trust- 

 worthy testimony, as having been taken in British waters, is 

 that which Montagu, a trustworthy naturalist, affirms that he 

 saw taken on a night-line in the Wiltshire Avon, weighing 

 8 lb. Next comes Colonel Thornton, of Thornville Royal, 

 in Yorkshire, who in 1784 made a sporting tour through 

 Scotland as far as Strathspey. He took with him a regular 

 camp train and equipage, just as any enterprising young man 

 might do at the present day for an expedition to Africa or the 

 Rockies. The gallant colonel shot and fished freely wherever 

 he went, and published his experiences in a most entertaining 

 book, entitled A Sporting 'Tour through the Northern Parts 

 of England and great part of the Highlands of Scotland.^ He 

 describes his capture on a spinning bait of a perch in Loch 

 Lomond weighing 7 lb., and there is no reason to suspect him 

 of exaggeration in this matter, for his narrative throughout 

 bears the stamp of truth. In his following was the well-known 

 animal painter Garrard, whose brush, it is to be deplored, was 

 not employed in portraying this noble fish, as it afterwards 

 was in painting the picture of the great pike of Loch Alvie, 

 also killed by Colonel Thornton, which now hangs in the 

 saloon of the Piscatorial Society in the Holborn Restaurant. 



Over certain other records of heavy perch there hangs a 

 cloud of uncertainty, if not of suspicion. The bass, or sea- 

 perch {Labrax lupus) ^ whereof further mention will be made 

 presently, indulges an inclination to ascend tidal rivers. It 

 is a near relative of the common perch, and it has been 

 surmised by Mr. Alfred Jardine, an experienced authority upon 

 pike and perch fishing, that most of these monsters may be 

 identified with the bass. Indeed, one so-called perch, weighing 

 lOj lb., was sent by the Birmingham and Midland Piscatorial 

 Association to the International Fisheries Exhibition in 1883, 

 and was proved upon examination to be a bass, or sea-perch. 

 * London, 1804; second edition, 1896. 



