454 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
streams about Winchester, are of a beautiful silvery colour. 
Gudgeons placed in a glass bowl will become very white, and lose 
the beautiful brown colour on their backs.” “A fishmonger at 
Billingsgate Market told me he generally knew from what part of 
the coast fish came by the colour of them. This observation was 
a propos to a quantity of Dutch Jack that were displayed on his 
slab; and which looked very dingy and dark-coloured, as though 
they had lived in stagnant and dirty water; very different from 
a clean and bright-coloured Thames Jack.”  ‘‘Sticklebacks are 
wonderful fish to change their colour. I have seen Sticklebacks 
at the tail of a mill pond at Islip of the most beautiful iridescent 
colour; the bottom was composed of clean white gravel stones. 
Again, there is a ditch running round Christchurch meadow at 
Oxford ; here the water is black and dirty, and the Sticklebacks 
are of a brown and almost black colour.” * The same author 
considers that ‘‘the Black-backed Salmon” of the Galway river 
‘are fish which have spent most of their lives in dark bog-coloured 
water, and hence they have assumed the peculiar dark appearance 
they present, for, as we all know, the colour of the fish is 
wonderfully influenced by the colour of the water in which it 
lives.” + There is a well-known rock on the coast of Cornwall, 
about five leagues from the land, and standing up from the plain 
ground which spreads to a large distance round it. The top of 
the rock is full of gullies shaded with weeds, and Congers which 
are caught on it are always black, while close to its base these 
fish are always white.{ From Great Yarmouth it is reported 
that Flounders (Pleuronectes flesus) when sea-caught are lighter 
hued than those taken on a muddy bottom. ‘The Sunfish 
(Labrus auritus, Linn.) caught in the deep waters of Green River 
in Kentucky exhibit a depth of olive brown quite different from 
the general tint of those caught in the colourless waters of the 
* * Curiosities Nat. Hist.,’ pop. edit., Ist ser., pp. 285-7, 289. 
} Ibid. 4th ser., p. 271. This last conclusion seems scarcely borne out 
in a previous remark by the same naturalist that ‘white Trout prefer streams 
which contain bog water.” . . . ‘On the east side of Lough Corrib no 
white Trout are found—there is but very little bog water; but they are 
found on the west side, where the feeders of the lake run through a country 
abounding with bogs”’ (ibid. 4th ser., p. 258). 
{ Jon. Couch, ‘ Hist. Fishes Brit. Islands,’ vol. iv. p. 842. 
§ A. Patterson, ‘ Zoologist,’ 4th ser. vol. i. p. 557. 
