THE COMPLETE ANGLEE. 119 



disquisitions of men of more leisure, and of greater abilities, 

 than I profess myself to have.* 



And lastly, I am to borrow so much of your promised 

 patience as to tell you, that the trout or salmon, being in 

 season, have, at their first taking out of the water, which 

 continues during life, their bodies adorned, the one with such 

 red spots, and the other with such black or blackish spots, as 

 give them such an addition of natural beauty, as I think 

 was never given to any woman by the artificial paint or 

 patches in which they so much pride themselves in this age. 

 And so I shall leave them both, and proceed to some obser- 

 vations on the pike. 



[REMARKS ox THE NATUEAL HISTORY, HABITS, ARTIFICIAL 

 BREEDING OF, AND FISHING FOR, SALMON. It is not at all surprising 

 that the venerable and venerated father of our art should have been but 

 imperfectly acquainted with the history and the habits of the salmo 

 salar, the progenitor of nearly every variety of salmonidce (descendants 

 of the salmon), chiefly by means of fortuitous alliances with the salmo 

 fario, or pure river trout it is not, I say, surprising, since even at the 

 present day, not one in many thousand consumers of salmon, and not one 

 in many hundred captors of it are acquainted with the extraordinary 

 phases in the life of this valuable and splendid fish. Of its general 

 habits I think I am accurately cognisant, although my opinions are dis- 

 puted by many clever people, but I am happy to know that all careful 

 observers agree with me. I shall give a rapid resume of all I know of 

 the fluvial monarch of the British Isles. The salmon salmo salar is 

 called by Shaw the " silvery grey spotted salmon/' with the jaws of the 

 male fish incurvated ; by Linnaeus it is described with " rostro ultra in- 

 feriorem maxillamprominente" (snout projecting beyond the lower jaws), 

 and by Dr. Fleming it is described with upper jaw longest, teeth on the 

 lower i dorsal fin fourteen rays, pectoral fourteen, ventral ten, anal 

 thirteen, and caiidal (or tail) twenty-one rays. The salmon is a fresh- 

 water fish, for in fresh-water it breeds, passes the whole of the first year 



* There is a fish in many rivers, of the salmon kind, which, though very 

 small, is thought by some curious persons to be of the same species ; and this, I 

 take it, is the fish known by the different names of salmon-pink, shedders, 

 skeggers, and last-springs. But there is another small fish, very much resem- 

 bling these in shape and colour, called the gravel-last-spring, found only in the 

 river Wye and Severn ; which is, undoubtedly, a distinct species. These spawn 

 about the beginning of September : and in the Wye I have taken them with 

 an ant-fly as fast as I could throw. Perhaps this is what Walton calls the 

 tecon. H. 



[NOTE. All the fish named, except the gravel-last-spring, are salmon-fry of 

 different ages, from three or four months to twelve. The gravel-last-spring is, 

 in all probability, the little trout called a " parr." It is found in many rivers 

 besides the Wye and Severn. Walton's " tecon" may be the parr. Samlet, 

 skegger, etc., are local names for young salmon, before their first migration to 

 sea. ED.] 



