42 DR. A. GUNTHER ON THE BRITISH CHARRS. [Feb. 11, 
of the County of Antrim’ (vol. i. p. 119), ina list of the fishes of 
Lough Neagh, enumerates the Whiting, which by a friend of the 
author, Mr. Templeton, is declared to be the 8. alpinus. A rough 
drawing is added. As the description does not give any specific 
characters, we are left in doubt about the correctness of the determi- 
nation. It is probable that the Whiting of Lough Neagh is now 
extinct. 
Thompson* says that, when visiting Lough Neagh in 1834, he 
was assured by the fishermen that they had not known of any of those 
Whitings being taken in that lake for at least ten years previously. 
This is confirmed by R. Patterson, Esq., of Belfast, in a letter ad- 
dressed to me, in which he states that the Charr “has been believed 
to be extinct in that lake for more than thirty years.” Therefore, 
the question whether the Whiting of Lough Neagh was identical with 
one of the other species, or whether it was a distinct species, will re- 
main unsolved. Surely, if any group of fishes requires particular care 
in collecting and preserving its representatives at different localities, 
it is that of the Charrs, which, confined to very limited localities, and 
extremely susceptible to the changes of their element, are exposed to 
the danger of easy destruction: the Torgoch of Llanberris disappears 
for a series of years, (as it is said) in consequence of the poisonous 
fluids carried down from the copper-mines of the neighbourhood ; 
the Charr of Lough Neagh becomes extinct, from reasons unknown. 
We are afraid there are other similar instances, but unrecorded in 
natural history. 
1834. AGassiz, engaged in the examination of some of the conti- 
nental Salmonide, and having compared them with those in Great 
Britain, declared, at the meeting of the British Association of that 
year, that the Charrs of England and Ireland, the Ombre chevalier 
of the Lake of Geneva, and all the different Charr-like fishes of 
Sweden, Switzerland, and all the southern parts of Germany were 
one and the same species—or that S. umbda, L., S. salvelinus, L., S. 
alpinus, L., and S. salmarinus, L., were merely synonymous. 
Heckel already has shown, with regard to the Swiss representatives 
of Agassiz’s S. umblat, that two very different species are comprised 
in it, different in the size of the scales, in the shape of the body, in 
the coloration, and, according to Rapp’s researches, in the number of 
the vertebree—or that the S. wmdla, figured by Agassiz, ‘ Poiss. d’eau 
douce,’ pls. 10 & 11, is the true S. wmbla of Linné, from the Lake of 
Neuchatel, but that the S. wmbla, Agassiz, pl. 9, is identical with 
S. salvelinus, L., from the Lake of Zurich. 
Nor can I arrive at the same conclusion as M. Agassiz with 
regard to the British Charrs known to me. It is much to be re- 
gretted that in that paper neither the localities are mentioned whence 
the specimens examined were obtained, nor that the opinion started 
was supported by a comparative description ; and we cannot assume 
that M. Agassiz’s opinion referred to Scotch specimens only (which 
* Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1841, vi. p. 448. 
+ Report of the Fourth Meeting of the British Association, at Edinburgh, p. 622. 
t Reisebericht, p. 91. 
