162 SALMON AND TROUT. 
found traces of shell-fish in greater or less abundance. Lough 
Melvin is the ‘head centre’ for Gillaroo fishing, and anyone 
who wants to have good sport as well as ordinary lake trout 
fishing, with an occasional ferox or salmon, cannot do better 
than pay a visit to Mrs. Scott’s moderately charging and 
charmingly situated hotel at Garrison, Beleek (co. Fermanagh). 
As to colouring, I consider the Gillaroo trout distinctly 
the most beautiful fish in the British Islands. It has been 
said to be recognised in Lough Neagh, the largest of the Irish 
lakes, as well as Loughs Boffin, Corrib, Mask, and some others , 
and, according to Stoddart, also in Lochs Muloch, Corrig, and 
Assynt in Scotland. 
In a specimen examined by Mr. Yarrell, the number 
of rays of the back fin was less by two than in the more ordi- 
nary specimens of the common trout, but the numbers of all 
the other fin rays, as well as of the vertebree, were identical. 
Variations and deformities amongst trout have been noticed 
from time to time which their discoverers have doubtless 
been pleased to chronicle as separate species ; for instance, 
there is the Botling, mentioned by Dr. Davy as inhabiting 
Wastwater, Cumberland, which attains a weight of ten or twelve 
pounds, and is found in the autumn ascending the lake streams 
for the purpose of spawning. In form it is short and deep, 
with the lower jaw much hooked, or curved upwards, and, when 
full grown, its girth considerably exceeds its length. In the 
arrangement of its teeth and spots it resembles closely the 
ordinary trout. 
Another singular variety is the ‘hog-backed trout’ of Plin- 
limmon, a fish not altogether unlike the perch in form, and there 
is also the deformed trout of Lochdow, Inverness-shire, in which 
the lower jaw protrudes a long way beyond the upper. This fish 
was supposed to be confined to Lochdow, but I caught similar 
trout with the fly in 1862 in a mountain tarn of the same county, 
called Roy, or Roi, from which the picturesque little salmon 
river so named takes its source. The elevation of the loch 
above the sea level is considerable, and its appearance striking, 
