54 SALMONID.E. 



Trout, procured at the same time from localities where DO 

 such food could be obtained, were of the usual dark colour 

 of that season of the year. 



Mr. Stoddart, in his " Art of Angling as practised in Scot- 

 land," mentions an interesting experiment made with Trout, 

 some years ago in the south of England, in order to ascertain 

 the value of different food. " Fish were placed in three 

 separate tanks, one of which was supplied daily with worms, 

 another with live minnows, and the third with those small 

 dark-coloured water-flies which are to be found moving 

 about on the surface under banks and sheltered places. 

 ^ The Trout fed with worms grew slowly, and had a lean 

 appearance ; those nourished on minnows, which, it was 

 observed, they darted at with great voracity, became much 

 larger ; while such as were fattened upon flies only, attained 

 in a short time prodigious dimensions, weighing twice as 

 much as both the others together, although the quantity of 

 food swallowed by them was in nowise so great." 1 ' 



Of four Trout fed in a stew together, three of them 

 weighed fifteen pounds each, the fourth attained the weight 

 of seventeen pounds ; but neither the food nor the time 

 consumed was recorded. 



Stephen Oliver the younger, in his agreeable Scenes and 

 Recollections of Fly-fishing, mentions a Trout " taken in 

 the neighbourhood of Great Driffield, in September 1832, 

 which measured thirty-one inches in length, twenty-one in 

 girth, and weighed seventeen pounds." A few years since, 

 a notice was sent to the Liimean Society of a Trout that was 

 caught on the llth of January 1822, in a little stream, ten 

 feet wide, branching from the Avon, at the back of Castle- 

 street, Salisbury. On being taken out of the water, its 

 weight was found to be twenty-five pounds. Mrs. Powell, 



