150 SALMON AND TROUT. 
inferior to both the salmon and sea trout, if we can only induce 
him to try conclusions with us the bull trout is a splendid 
fellow—a ‘foeman worthy of our steel.’ There is a breadth of 
build and general strengthiness about him which is not belied 
by the gallantry and determination with which he shows fight 
when brought to bay. I think he dies harder than even the 
salmon—the Bayard of the water, sans peur et sans reproche. 
Indeed, he is better built for fighting in some respects, being 
shorter, thicker, and generally more muscular—more bull-like, 
‘in fact, in appearance, as his name denotes 
I have pointed out the comparative rarity of the bull trout 
as contrasted with the salmon proper, but it is very likely that 
it exists in many more rivers than those chronicled by ichthyo- 
logists, and indeed that it is in many cases mistaken by local 
anglers for the salmon. The river in which it is best known 
and where its habits have been ‘probably most studied is the 
Tweed, where it is as abundant as either the salmon or sea 
trout. Lord Home gives the following observations on the 
habits of the Tweed bull trout : 
‘The bull trout has increased in numbers in the Tweed 
prodigiously within the last forty years, and to that increase I 
attribute the decrease of salmon trout or whitling—for the 
whitling in the Tweed was the salmon trout, not the young bull 
trout, which now go by the name of trouts simply. The bull 
trout take the river at two seasons. The first shoal come up 
about the end of April and May. They are then small, weigh- 
ing from twv to four or five pounds. The second, and by far the 
more numerous shoal, come late in November. They then come 
up in thousands, and are not only in fine condition, but of a 
much larger size, weighing from six to twenty pounds. The 
bull trout is an inferior fish, and is exactly what is called, at 
Dalkeith and Edinburgh, Musselburg trout. 
‘The great shoal of bull trout not taking the river till after 
the commencement of close time, are in a great measure lost 
both to the proprietor and the public,’ 
Yarrell, however, speaking of the bull trout generally, 
