NATURAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SALMONIDA. 147 
on angling, refers to the capture of a salmon of seventy pounds 
in the Thames near Fulham, in the year 1789, ‘which was sub- 
sequently sold to Mr. Howell, a fishmonger in the Minories, for 
a shilling a pound,’ and during the present season, when fishing 
for ova on the Tay at Almond Mouth, a fish was netted con- 
sidered to have weighed over eighty pounds, as it was six and a 
half inches longer than one of seventy pounds taken in the same 
river, of which there is a cast in the South Kensington Museum. 
It was a male fish in splendid condition, and measuring in 
length four feet eleven and a half inches, and in girth two feet 
five inches. As it was the close season the fish was, of course, 
returned to the water, and, as Mr. Malloch, who reports these 
particulars, observes, some one may get him with the fly later 
on. Whoever does will have his work cut out ! 
Very large salmon are, however, occasionally caught with 
the rod. One is noticed by Mr. Lascelles, as taken in Scotland, 
which weighed fifty-four pounds and a half. The late Sir Hyde 
Parker captured one in Sweden weighing sixty pounds, and a 
former Earl of Home took another from the same waters of the 
unequalled weight of seventy pounds within a few ounces. 
Thave never myself been lucky enough to kill a salmon over 
twenty-five pounds, but I have had my ‘experiences’ with fish 
which I know both from sight and ‘feel’ must have been nearer 
forty-five than thirty-five pounds. 
I once had one on in the Usk from two o’clock till eight in 
the evening—for a,good part of the time right under the point 
of my rod, a sufficiently powerful one, but could do absolutely - 
nothing with him. When he chose to move to another pool he 
moved there, and when he chose not to move at all he stopped 
still. At last it began to get dark, and lanterns were brought’ 
from the village and dotted at short intervals up and down the 
river, which was now coming down in a heavy spate. Finally, 
‘at about eight o’clock, when the flood was ‘roaring from 
bank to brae,’ he made one splendid rush under Panscatlog 
bridge, where to follow was impossible—carried out the whole 
of the eighty or ninety yards of line, and rolled over the fall 
L2 
