THE TROUT 65 



mained till last week, when it departed this life, not through any 

 sickness or infirmity attendant on old age, but from want of its 

 natural element — water, the severe drought having dried up the 

 spring — a circumstance which has not happened for the last sixty 

 years. His lips and gills were perfectly white, although his head 

 was formerly black, and of a large size. He regularly came, 

 when summoned by his master by the name of 'Ned,' to feed 

 from his hand, on snails, worms, and bread. This remarkable 

 fish has been visited, and considered a curiosity by the neigh- 

 bouring country for several years." 



The progress of trout towards maturity has also been 

 a fruitful topic of discussion, and, indeed, remains 

 undecided at the present hour. Some contend that 

 they grow comparatively quickly ; others, on the 

 contrary, maintain the opposite notion, and affirm that 

 their growth is singularly slow. For our own part, we 

 conceive them to be fish of slow growth, and we also 

 imagine that many of them never attain any great size. 

 "We advance this opinion on the strength of two or 

 three general facts, which have been repeatedly verified 

 during an experience of forty years' standing, and which 

 also may be tested by the experience and observation 

 of every inquisitive angler who will direct his attention 

 to the subject. 



In the first place, in really good streams, you will 

 always find, year after year, the great mass of the fish 

 nearly about the same size, no matter in what particular 

 year you angle, or what kind of bait you employ. We 

 could name twenty trout - streams in England and 

 Scotland, where ten out of every twelve fish caught in 

 all seasons will be within an ounce or two of each other. 

 Now, this conformity among such numerous tribes can 

 only be rationally accounted for on the supposition that 

 they are of slow growth, and remain long stationary 

 at the same size. If there were always a progressive 

 increase going on, even according to the most moderate 

 scale of advance, we should not find this uniformity or 

 fixity of bulk ; but we should see trout of all sizes, and 

 this, too, in regular and equal proportions. 



In the second place, we find that large trout are 

 seldom caught in rivers which abound with this fish. 



