CHAPTER X. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



I DO not think that I can usefully add anything to the foregoing pages. 

 The reader who has traced the life-history of the sea-trout as I have 

 given it in these chapters will, if he is an angler, be able to test the 

 description of each stage from facts which he has himself personally 

 observed. If he is a student of fish Ufe as well as an angler — the one 

 interest does not always necessarily involve the other — he will be able 

 to recognise how far I have followed accepted beliefs and how far I 

 have departed from them. He will, I am afraid, find no great store of 

 facts and ideas that can pretend to be original or even novel. But 

 there is this to be said in extenuation, that while it is comparatively 

 easy to air original views in regard to the more or less abstruse problems 

 which one encounters in the study of fish life, it is not so easy to 

 substantiate them by facts derived from actual investigation. I have 

 tried as far as possible to support my theories with facts, and the reader 

 will judge how far these are to be accepted as evidence. In any case 

 it has been my care to distinguish between matters which are certain, 

 those which are uncertain, and those again which are simply theoretical 

 in the life-history of the sea-trout. 



There is one matter, however, as to which I think a final word may 

 here be added. However greatly we may extend our present know- 

 ledge regarding the details of the sea-trout's career, it seems to me that 

 no real progress can be made until it is determined with certainty just 

 exactly what a sea-trout is. 



My views upon this subject must inevitably lack the authority which 



an exact scientific training, if I could claim such, would have given 



them, but, for whatever value they have, they may be brought within 



the scope of the following brief summary. 



205 



