SEVENTH DAY.J GRA YLING RIVERS. 189 



to small trout.* Of their growth after the second 

 year I cannot speak; this must depend much on 

 their food and place of residence. Marsigli says, 

 they do not grow after the third year, and at this age, 

 in Austria, they are sometimes a cubit long; but 

 though I have fished much in that country, I never 

 saw any so long. If they are taken into new and 

 comparatively still water recently made, and where 

 food is plenty, they grow very fast; under these 

 circumstances, I have seen them above 31bs. In the 

 Test, where, as I mentioned before, the grayling has 

 been only recently introduced, they have sometimes 

 been caught between 3 and 41bs. in this river I 

 never took one above 2lbs., but I have heard of one 

 being taken of 2^1bs. The grayling is a rare fish in 

 England, and has never been found in Scotland and 

 Ireland (as Poietes observed before) ; and there are 

 few rivers containing all the conditions necessary for 

 their increase. I know of no grayling river farther 

 west than the Avon in Hampshire : they are found in 

 some of the tributary streams of this river which rise 



[* Some of the circumstances stated in the text above admit of 

 doubt, as that of the contact of the male and female fish in the act of 

 spawning ; that of the young grayling, the shote, met with in Septem- 

 ber and October, being only four or five months old : from such 

 information as I have been able to collect, I am led to infer, that like 

 the salmon, the breeding fishes merely follow each other closely ; and 

 that the shote is at least one year old. J.D.] 



