THE COMMON TROUT. 211 



their natal streams, and entered, either from free 

 will or the force of circumstances, into another to 

 which they were unaccustomed. Each river having 

 a character of its own in respect to rapidity of 

 current, clearness of colour, and which is nearly 

 the same thing the amount and nature of the 

 substances which it holds in solution, that cha- 

 racter may no doubt become impressed upon what- 

 ever living things repose within its bosom, and so 

 enable your tarry-thumbed and heavy-booted boat- 

 man to say, " Behold the Tiber !" when, thinking 

 of Tay's refulgent waters, he sweeps his net by 

 Roxburgh's ducal bowers, or lifts his accordant 

 oars harmoniously along time-honouring Brisbane^ 

 fair well-fished domain. 



We have already mentioned more than once, 

 that the size of trouts, as a species, cannot be 

 stated, so let every angler kill as many large ones 

 as he can, and raise the average. They are said 

 to attain to a great age. One kept in a dingy 

 well in Dumbarton Castle, a well, and a lack o" 

 day ! dwelt there for twenty-eight years, it is 

 said with no increase of size from a pound weight 

 when first put in ; and another was equally well 

 off, indeed better, in an aqueous receptacle of the 

 same nature, in Mr. Mossop's orchard near Brough- 

 ton in Furness, where it lived for fifty-three years. 

 In "a wild state," full grown trout of what we 

 would call large size, may be said to range from 

 two to five pound in weight. Beyond that size 

 they are certainly extremely rare, although in stews 

 and ponds they may be fed up to still greater 



