ADDITIONAL NOTES. 



(On the Parr, page 69.) 



THE author, in supposing that the parr may be produced from 

 a cross between the river trout and the sea trout, does not 

 mean to attach any importance to this idea. The fish differs so 

 little from the common trout, that it may be questioned, 

 whether it is not more entitled to the character of a variety 

 than of a species. In many rivers on the continent, the author 

 has seen small trout with olive or brown marks, like those of 

 the British parr ; and a friend informs him, that he has caught 

 fish of the same kind in the streams connected with the Lake of 

 Geneva.* In rivers, flowing into the Danube, these small fish 

 are very common ; but, as well as he remembers, their marks 

 are pale or yellowish-brown, or olive, and not dark or blue like 

 those of our parr. The salmon does not belong to any of these 

 localities, but the hucho haunts the tributary streams of the 

 Danube. The smelts, or young of the salmo hucho, and sea 

 trout, and lake trout, are all distinguished by the uniform dark 

 colour of the back, and the silvery whiteness of the belly. He 

 does not remember to have seen any of the streaked, or parr 

 varieties of trout in rivers, in which there was only one species, 

 or variety of large salmo. The mottled colour of the skin is, he 



[* The young of the common trout has transverse marks similar to those 

 of the parr, though less distinct, yet sufficiently so to require an experienced 

 eye to avoid mistaking the one for the other. These markings indeed seem 

 to belong to fish of the salmon kind generally, and hence the facility of 

 adopting the view proposed hardly advocated by the author, that the parr 

 may be a hybrid : and that there may be such a hybrid appears from the 

 results of the experiments of Mr. Shaw ; he states that he has succeeded in 

 hatching the ova of the salmon impregnated with the milt of the common 

 river trout. See " Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing," by Win. Scrope, Esq. 

 J. D.] 



