176 FISHING GOSSIP. 
bottom-feeders, that a wels must have but rarely a 
chance of catching them. Under favourable circum- 
stances the wels grows quickly in the earlier part of 
its life, attaining a weight of 4 Ib. in the first year, 
and 3 lbs. in the second ; it is very probably a long- 
lived fish, growing, like many others, during the whole 
of its existence. Different opinions exist as to the 
flavour of its flesh. That of young individuals is 
certainly not inferior to the flesh of the pike; and 
that of old ones appeared to me to taste exactly like 
the flesh of a sturgeon. In districts where it is 
found in some quantity, the air-bladder is preserved 
and used as isinglass. 
At one of the first meetings of the Acclimatisation 
Society of Great Britain, to which I had been invited 
in order to give my opinion as to the feasibility of the 
introduction of the pike-perch (Lucioperca), I opposed 
the plan, for reasons which I then detailed, and directed 
the attention of the meeting to the wels, stating that 
it was the only species which could be recommended 
for acclimatisation at present. The acclimatisation of 
tropical fish, no matter whether from lowland waters | 
or from mountain-streams, is a thing as impossible as 
that of palm-trees ; yet it has been proposed, talked 
of, and even written about. In a climate like that of 
Great Britain, only those species can thrive which are 
taken from a temperate zone; therefore, the idea of 
transporting a valuable species from the temperate 
