226 DOMESTICATED TROUT. 



The age to which trout live is not known. Seth 

 Green says that twelve years is probably about the 

 average age, and that they are in their prime between 

 the age of three years and ten years. I am inclined 

 to think that they live to a greater age than this. 

 Other kinds of fish in parks in the Old World are 

 known to have attained enormous ages,* and to have 

 been equalled only in their longevity by the human 

 race before the flood. Why should the trout be so 

 short-lived ? 



Mr. Lancaster, of Oxford, in a memoir published 

 last year, says that fish have great tenacity of life, 

 and mentions a carp that reached the age of 150 

 years, and a pike, 19 feet long, that lived in a fish- 

 pond in Germany 267 years. f He says whales are 

 believed to live one or two centuries. 



The size to which brook trout may grow is very un- 

 certain, and when we come to the question of the size 

 of those that have been actually caught we are on 

 mythical ground. The trouble is, as Green mentions, 

 that many of the " fish stories " which are told are so 



tiously, as it is doubtful whether all the other modifying condi- 

 tions were so exactly alike that the results were wholly due to the 

 difference of food. For illustration, a considerable difference in 

 temperature, or in the quantity of food, would affect the condition 

 of the fish more than the difference in the nature of the food. 



* Pike and carp in artificial ponds have been repeatedly found 

 with gold rings in their fins, and other kinds of labels, on which 

 were found dates that proved conclusively that one hundred years 

 had elapsed since the inscription was made. J. V. C. SMITH, 

 JVat. His. Mass. Fishes, p. 57. 



t The greatest wonder about such a fish, if he were in this 

 country, would be that had he escaped the poachers so long. 



