THE GREAT LAKE TROUT. 255 



A difference of opinion exists among natura- 

 lists regarding the identity of our present species, 

 with that gigantic one of the Swiss lakes, a 

 specimen of which, killed in the Lake of Geneva, 

 weighed sixty-seven pounds. Though equalling, 

 or even exceeding the salmon both in size and 

 strength, it differs from that fish, and conforms 

 with our own, in never seeking the waters of the 

 sea. Indeed, the existence of the same species in 

 the Lake of Constance, the available communication 

 of which with any saline waters is cut off by the 

 falls of Schaffhausen, demonstrates their indepen- 

 dence of the ocean. It does not appear, from any 

 information we possess, that these great Continental 

 lake trouts ever condescend to rise at the artificial 

 fly. Those we saw at Constance, many years back, 

 were taken by trolling, much after the method we 

 have just described, and we had then no doubt that 

 the fish itself was the same as our Salmo ferooc. 

 But when the latter was shewn to M. Agassiz, on 

 his visit to Edinburgh in 1834, he gave it as his 

 opinion that it differed from the Swiss kind, and 

 we therefore succumb to his opinion. We shall 

 not, however, succumb to any one who insists, as 

 many do, that the gigantic trout of Lake Wener 

 in Sweden, is a true and actual salmon debarred by 



three pounds. We several seasons ago received some very singular 

 trouts from a small loch called Lochdow, near Pitmain, in Inverness- 

 shire. Their heads were short and round, and their upper-jaws were 

 truncated like that of a bull-dog. They do not occur in any of the 

 neighbouring lochs, and have not been observed above the weight of 

 half a pound. This peculiar variety has since been figured by Mr. 

 Yarrell. Trouts of the ordinary shape likewise occur in Lochdow. 



