62 SALMONIA. 



or golden-coloured belly and fins, and are ge- 

 nerally a broader and thicker fish ; but inter- 

 nally they have a different organization, pos- 

 sessing a large thick muscular stomach, which 

 has been improperly compared to a fowl's, 

 and which generally contains a quantity of 

 small shell-fish of three or four kinds : and 

 though in those I caught the stomachs were 

 full of these shell-fish, yet they rose greedily 

 at the fly. 



POIET. Are they not common trout which 

 have gained the habit of feeding on shell- 

 fish? 



HAL. If so, they have been altered in a 

 succession of generations. The common trouts 

 of this lake have stomachs like other trouts, 

 which never, as far as my experience has 

 gone, contain shell-fish; but of the gillaroo 

 trout, I have caught with a fly some not 

 longer than my finger, which have had as 

 perfect a hard stomach as the larger ones, 

 with the coats as thick in proportion, and the 

 same shells within ; so that this animal is at 

 least now a distinct species, and is a sort of 

 link between the trout and char, which has a 



