1 68 VIGNETTES FROM NATURE, 



which, when caught, I shall doubtless eat for 

 supper with a clear conscience, I may as well 

 stifle my scruples now, and take notes of my 

 trout while he is still fresh and lifelike. 

 After all, it is just as legitimate, I suppose, 

 to catch a fish in the interests of science as 

 to catch it for the sake of dishing it up at 

 supper in a tempting brown case of ^^^ and 

 bread-crumbs. 



There can be no doubt or hesitation 

 about the right of the Llyn Gwernant trout 

 to rank as a separate species. The marks 

 which distinguish it from the common 

 speckled trout of English brooks and rivers 

 are many and undeniable. But the question 

 how it came here is a very curious and in- 

 teresting one. We have in Britain altogether 

 some twelve kinds of trout, peculiar to our 

 own islands ; and most of them are limited, 

 as in this case, to a single station, usually a 

 mountain pool with only one precipitous out- 

 let. On the old theory, which represented 

 every species of plant or animal as the direct 



