CHAPTER XVI 



THE COMMON TROUT 



The Common or Brown Trout — Its Variability — Doubtful Permanence of 

 So-called Species — B-Qod of Trout — Trout-fishing. 



The Common or Brown Trout {Salmo fario) 



Fins. I Teeth. 



As in the salmon. I As in the salmon. 



The name " trout " seems to have had an origin in the 

 term applied to fish in general by primitive man. The Greek 

 T/Dw/cTT^? means a gnawer, a nibbler, a greedy creature, from 

 TpcjyeLv, to gnaw, and was applied to some kind of marine fish 

 with sharp teeth ; from the Greek probably came the Latin 

 tructa and the French truite^ but we derive our form of the 

 word through a different channel, for it appears in Anglo- 

 Saxon as truht. It is a term well fitted by its root meaning to 

 denote a fish so insatiably predaceous as our brown trout is by 

 nature, albeit long and painful experience of the malice of man 

 has rendered it shy and suspicious. The most incorrigible 

 human gourmand might learn to be abstemious if the dangers 

 lurking in too frequent calipash and calipee and too copious 

 draughts of Perrier Jouet took the tangible form of barbed 

 steel, instead of the more subtle and even deadlier agencies 

 of dyspepsia and uric acid. 



Professor Seeley tabulates no fewer than twenty-four 

 species of fresh-water trout in Europe, besides five migratory 



species, but the extreme variability of the whole race of trout 



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