54 SALMONID^. 



Trout, procured at tlie same time from localities where no 

 such food could be obtained, were of the usual dark colour 

 of that season of the year. 



Mr. Stoddart, in his " Art of Angling as practised in Scot- 

 land," mentions an interesting experiment made with Trout, 

 some years ago in the south of England, in order to ascertain 

 the value of different food. " Fish were placed in three 

 separate tanks, one of which Avas supplied daily with worms, 

 another with live minnows, and the third with those small 

 dark-coloured water-flies which are to be found moving 

 about on the surface under banks and sheltered places. 

 The Trout fed with worms grew slowly, and had a lean 

 appearance ; those nourished on minnows, which, it was 

 observed, they darted at with great voracity, became much 

 larger ; while such as were fattened upon flies only, attained 

 in a short time prodigious dimensions, weighing twice as 

 much as both the others together, although the quantity of 

 food swallowed by them was in nowise so great." 



Of four Trout fed in a stew together, three of them 

 weighed fifteen pounds each, the fourth attained the weight 

 of seventeen pounds ; but neither the food nor the time 

 consumed was recorded. 



Stephen Oliver the younger, in his agreeable Scenes and 

 Recollections of Fly-fishing, mentions a Trout " taken in 

 the neighbourhood of Great Driffield, in September 1832, 

 which measured thirty-one inches in length, twenty-one in 

 girth, and weighed seventeen pounds." A few years since, 

 a notice was sent to the Linnean Society of a Trout that was 

 caught on the llth of January 182S, in a little stream, ten 

 feet wide, branching from the Avon, at the back of Castle- 

 street, Salisbury. On being taken out of the water, its 

 weight was found to be twenty-five pounds. Mrs. Powell, 



