84 MARINE AND FRESHWATER FISHES 



naturalist to whom the nation is indebted for the collection 

 that bears his name. The value of many of these casts 

 is greatly augmented through the fact that they were 

 painted with life-like fidelity by the late Mr. H. L. Rolfe, 

 whose skill in this artistic department was so prominent as 

 to have won for him with icthyologists the justly-merited 

 title of " The Landseer among Fishes ! " Among this, so-to- 

 say, " classic series " of Salmon casts, will be found that very 

 monster of his tribe, the celebrated Tay Salmon, or " King 

 of Scots," as Frank Buckland named him, which weighed 

 in the flesh no less than 70 lbs., and measured from snout 



\ P"\ 



FIG. 19. — SALMON {Salmo salar). 



to tail as much as four feet five inches. Here also the 

 renowned Rhine fish, weighing a pound less than his Scotch 

 contemporary, but with the larger dimensions of four feet 

 eight inches, and many a noble fifty pounder, hailing in 

 almost every instance from "across the border." Next to 

 these we find a long line of dissipated Kelts, distinguished 

 by their lean proportions and incurved projecting jaws, so 

 advantageously utilised by the male fish in excavating the 

 gravelly spawning beds wherein the female deposits her 

 many thousand eggs. The several earlier developmental 

 phases of the Salmon, including the gayly spotted and 



