80 MARVELS OF FISH LIFE 
and sea-trout, it is not always easy to distinguish at a 
glance one from the other, and more than once, notices 
have appeared in the Press such as “ salmon caught in 
the Thames,” or in some other waters equally uncon- 
genial to the King of Fishes, the fish caught really 
being a sea-trout. 
It does not, however, need an expert to distinguish 
between these two fish, for there is an infallible sign by 
which a small salmon or grilse can be distinguished from 
a sea-trout. 
In the salmon there are ten to twelve scales present 
along an oblique line running forward from the root 
of the adipose fin to the lateral line; in the sea-trout 
the scales number fourteen. 
The sea-trout appears in our country under various 
names, for example, the salmon trout, the white trout, 
the peal, the sewin and the bull trout. Like salmon, 
sea-trout spawn in fresh water and migrate to sea. But 
they differ considerably from the salmon in their habits, 
the most important point of difference, so far as the 
fisherman is concerned, being the fact that they feed 
in fresh water. A sea-trout starts life as an alevin, fry 
and parr, and then becomes a yellow fin, which corres- 
ponds to the smolt in the salmon. The yellow fin goes 
to sea and returns after three or four months weighing 
about a quarter of a pound, and is then known as a 
finnock, herling, or whitling. Coming back into fresh 
water about June, finnock feed freely and by the end 
of the year may have increased to a pound in weight. 
