THE TROUT. 163 



Galway in Ireland, are not a peculiar species, but that 

 they are the common trout changed by habit, the thick 

 and almost cartilaginous stomach, somewhat like the 

 gizzard of a fowl, being produced by the shell-fish 

 upon which they feed ; and that the sea-water, with 

 the saline substances on which they feed, redden the 

 flesh and give the pearly lustre to the scales of the 

 sea-trout. The salmon is adduced as a collateral proof, 

 and certainly the flesh of the salmon is a much finer 

 red, and the scales have much more lustre, when it first 

 leaves the sea-shore, than when it has been long in the 

 fresh water, and especially after it has spawned. But 

 the condition of the flesh at those two times depends 

 upon other causes than the difference between fresh 

 and salt water ; and if salt water had a tendency to 

 redden the flesh of any kind of fish, one would be apt 

 to think that it would have the same with all fish ; yet 

 of those taken in the sea the majority are white. 



The trout is a very voracious fish ; and as, like those 

 of very many fishes, the teeth are not adapted for mas- 

 tication or chewing, the prey is taken into the stomach 

 entire ; and there, in ordinary cases, probably reduced 

 to a chyme, or substance fit for nutriment, by solution. 

 In some cases, however, such as that of the Gillaroo- 

 trout, where the animal has to subsist on crustaceous 

 food, which it has no means of taking out of the shells, 

 or otherwise managing, but by swallowing them whole, 

 the stomach acquires great thickness, and probably the 

 food is ground and reduced by muscular action. That 

 part of the subject is, however, involved in consider- 

 able obscurity ; and indeed a great part of the economy 

 of fishes demands more careful attention than has 

 hitherto been bestowed upon it. 



