SALMONID^. 10? 



yearlings are sufficiently strong to find their own food, thus avoiding the principal 

 cause of mortality among fry, which is starvation. They soon accommodate them- 

 selves to new pieces of water. Two-year-olds are found to succeed best where 

 coarse fish or large fish already exist in the water. It has been found that there 

 is no difficulty in conveying trout in iced water for any journey not exceeding 

 twenty-four hours. That unless the water which is to be stocked is of similar 

 temperature some loss will arise from inflammation of the gills, they are 

 consequently carried best in cold weather. 



Hybrids. — At Howietown the following crosses were made : — November 27th, 

 1874, between a female Loch Leven trout and a male sea-trout, they hatched 

 March 20th and 21st, 1876. On December 3rd, between a female common burn 

 or brook-trout and the milt of the sea-trout, they hatched March 21st, 1875. Sea- 

 trouts' eggs with burn trout milt commenced to hatch on the 116th day : the 

 young have become indistinguishable from the common stock. On November 

 15th, 1882, Sir James Gibson-Maitland commenced the following experiments at 

 Howietown while I was present. 8000 ova of Salmo fontinalis were milted from 

 a S. levenensis, and were placed in hatching box no. 104. 3000 ova of S. levenensis 

 were milted from a 8. fontinalis and deposited in box no. 108. 9000 ova of 

 8. fontinalis were milted from a charr which has been termed 8. struanensis, and 

 placed in box no. 115. 



Life history. — All the various forms of trout have their parr stage. The normal 

 rate of growth in the ponds at Howietown I have already alluded to (see page 103). 

 Mr. Stoddart gives the result of an interesting expeiiment on young trout : — " Fish 

 were placed in three separate tanks, one of which was 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 on 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." 

 The size to which they attain depends upon the suitability of the water inhabited 

 and the amount of available food. Thus in some mountainous districts they may 

 never exceed 3 or 4 ounces in weight, while young hatched from the same batch of 

 eggs may attain to pounds. They are a long-lived fish : one was twenty-eight years 

 in a well in Dumbarton Castle ; another is said to have been fifty-three years in a 

 well in the orchard of Mr. Mossop, of Board Hall, near Broughton-in-Purness. 



As food. — Its value differs with the waters from whence it has been taken. Its 

 old name was " the venison of the waters," and denotes the general estimation in 

 which it was, and is still, held. It is in the best season from May until the end of 

 September, deteriorating in and after the breeding period. Some consider the 

 females as food to be better than the males. 



Habitat. — The colder and temperate portions of the northern hemisphere, 

 descending in Asia as far south as the Hindoo Koosh, but not normally present in 

 any portion of Hindostan. Heber, mistaking a spotted carp, Barilius, for a trout, 

 asserted they were found on the Himalayas, on which authority Couch gave India 

 as one of its habitats. It has been introduced on the Neilgherry range of hills 

 in Southern India. It has been artificially introduced into many countries in the 

 southern hemisphere. In the Orkneys it is found in great plenty in every burn, 

 and generally extended throughout the rivers and lakes of the British Isles when 

 unchecked by pollutions. Some exceptions, however, to this general rule would 

 seem to occur, thus in Norfolk, we are told, it is found in small numbers in the 

 higher parts of the Bure, the Ware, and some of their tributaries, but not in the 

 Waveney (Lubbock). 



A trout upwards of 21 lb. and measuring 41^ inches in length, was taken in 

 a small tributary of the Trent at Drayton Manor, and sent by Sir Robert Peel to 

 Tarrell. In 1880 Buckland made a cast of one 17 lb. weight, captured at Reading. 

 July 11th, 1882, one 20 lb. weight was secured in Lough Derg, an expansion of 

 the Shannon (S. Hurley). 



