USUAL SIZE OF TROUT. 47 



and is now preserved in Professor Owen's collection. 

 Another, two feet six inches in length, and weighing 

 ten pounds, was taken in the Thames with fly, near 

 Kingston, in Surrey, in the last week of April 1857, by 

 a gentleman in the banking house of Drummond and 

 Company. I have also heard of two other leviathans 

 being captured in the Thames,* one weighing eleven 

 pounds, and the other sixteen ; while one taken in the 

 Breamish with minnow was more than five pounds in 

 weight ; and trout of three to five pounds are by no 

 means uncommon in the lower parts of the Till and 

 Tweed. But those patriarchs of the streams are not to 

 be met with every day, and a good-conditioned fish of 

 one, or even half a pound, is by no means to be despised, 

 at least in northern waters, where they do not generally 

 run so large, although vastly more numerous than in 

 the sunny valleys of the south. 



The female trout has a deeper body and a smaller 

 head in proportion to its length, than the male ; and is 

 considered to be of a superior flavour for the table. The 

 flesh of those in prime condition, in a river where food 

 is abundant, is of a delicate pink colour, and of a most 

 delicious flavour when cooked ; being superior, in my 

 estimation, to all other fish, whether inhabitants of salt 

 or fresh water, except the salmon, eriox, and whitling. 

 The rosy tint of the flesh of the salmonidae is caused 

 by its being permeated by a red colouring matter, which 

 Sir Humphrey Davy found to consist of a peculiar colour- 



* We have frequent records of trout of from six to twelve pounds 

 being captured in the Thames, the Severn, the Wye, and Trent. 



