170 FISHING GOSSIP. 
affluents. There is no evidence, either geological 
or historical, that it ever existed in Great Britain or 
Treland, and its reception into several works on 
British fauna is rather indicative of a wish that so 
remarkable a species should not be missing from the 
list of British fishes. It is said to be found occasion- 
ally in the Lake of Neuchatel, but the most western 
locality for it, where it thrives, and is of value as an 
article of food, is, as I have stated, the country 
north of the Lake of Constance. In speaking of rivers 
as habitats of the wels, or Silurus glanis, I must add 
that it is a lake rather than a river fish, avoiding even 
gentle currents, and retreating to those parts which 
are almost dead water. In such spots it is found 
throughout the system of the Danube, and as far 
south as Constantinople. The sluggish rivers of 
Northern Germany, and the numerous lakes of Meck- 
lenburg and Northern Prussia abound with the wels ; 
in Scandinavia it appears to be limited to a few 
localities, being more numerous in the eastern than 
the western parts ; it is found in the systems of all 
the rivers running into the Black and Caspian Seas, 
and probably it extends further eastwards into Central 
Asia, but in China and Japan we find it replaced by 
other, although closely allied species, 
It is a historical fact, worthy of the notice of 
those who would attempt the acclimatisation of the 
wels, that it has naturally extended its geographical 
