52 AMERICAN FISHES. 



Brook Trout never grows to be above half a pound — nor does it in 

 his waters. 



The common Trout of England, Salmo Fario, which is so closoly 

 connected with our Brook Trout, Salmo Fontinalis, as to be constantly 

 mistaken for it by casual observers, is continually taken in the larger 

 rivers, especially the Thames, and in some of the Irish waters, from 

 ten to fifteen pounds in weight. Mr. Yarrel, when preparing his 

 British Fishes, had a minute before him of six Trout taken in the 

 Thames, above Oxford, by minnow-spinning, which weighed together 

 fifty-four pounds, the largest weighing thirteen pounds; and one is 

 recorded in the transactions of the Linnaean Society as having been 

 taken on the 1st of January, 1822, in a little stream ten feet wide, 

 branching from the Avon at the back of Castle-street, Salisbury, which 

 on being taken out of the water was found to weigh twenty-five pounds. 



These instances, which are beyond dispute, in relation to a specias 

 so closely related to our fish as the Salmo Fario, render it anything 

 but improbable that it too, in favorable situations, should grow, to an 

 equal size ; nor is there any reason for doubting it, since it is known to 

 grow to the weight of five or six pounds, within a few ounces of which 

 latter weight I have myself seen it ; and there is no natural or phy- 

 sical analogy by which we should set that weight as the limit to its 

 increase. 



Should these remarks call the attention of sportsmen to a matter of 

 deep interest, and elicit from them occasional records of examina- 

 tions, which none can institute so well as they, their end will be fully 

 answered, and these pages will not have been thrown away. 



We now come at once to the history of this family, and first, as best, 

 to that of the true Salmon. 



This being the noblest and most game in its character of all fishes, 

 as I have observed before, once abounding in all waters eastward of 

 the Hudson, and still, though it has now ceased to exist in numbers, 

 west, of the Penobscot, and even there can be rarely taken with the 

 fly, is still the choicest pursuit of the American angler, although he 

 may be now compelled to seek it in the difficult and uncleared basins 

 of the Nova Scotian rivers ; in the Northern tributaries of the huge 

 St. Lawrence ; or yet farther to the Westward, in the streams of the 

 Columbia and the cold torrints of Oregon, all of which contain the 



