444 Mr. W. Thompson's Notes on British Char. 



this does not appear, but all have the two or three first rays 

 and their connecting membrane dusky, and the remainder 

 red, and of a deeper hue than on any part of the body : anal fin 

 partaking at its base of the colour of the part of the body to 

 which it is attached, dusky towards the tip ; white margin to 

 the first ray in some of the brighter-coloured specimens only : 

 caudal fin gray, of different shades in all; in the brightest in- 

 dividual varied with red, which appears at the base of the 

 lower lobe. 



The males are generally more gracefully formed than the 

 females, and most of them rather brighter in colour, but there 

 is no external character so strikingly different as to lead to a 

 certain knowledge of the sex ; some of the largest finned are 

 females — in the Loch Grannoch Char the males had much 

 the larger fins, and the sex was as unerringly distinguished 

 by the colour as by the form, the accuracy of the distinction 

 in both cases being established by dissection. Both sexes of 

 the Lough Melvin fish represent the Welsh Char. 



The colour of the flesh when boiled was rather pale, be- 

 tween the Ci sienna yellow" and " flesh-red" of Syme's No- 

 menclature of Colours ; no difference of colour in that of the 

 sexes. The milt and roe were in these specimens ready for 

 exclusion. The ova severally reckoned from a fish 11 inches 

 in length, and which had not shed any, were 959 in number, 

 and of a pale yellowish colour — the ova generally, though 

 equally mature, were lighter coloured than in the Loch 

 Grannoch Char ; they were of the same size, 2 lines in dia- 

 meter. 



The remains of food were found in only one out of the twelve 

 specimens, and appeared to be a portion of the case of a cad- 

 dis-worm. The vertebrae, as reckoned in two specimens, male 

 and female, were 60 in number*. 



Lord Cole informs me that this fish is called ec Freshwater 

 Herring" at Lough Melvin, though in the same part of the 

 country the term " Char" is applied to the more ordinary 

 state of the species as taken in other lakes. Its differing 

 from the so-called Char, in being an insipid bad fish for the 

 table, and pale in the flesh, is the chief reason of its being 

 considered distinct from it. It will, however, be seen in the 

 following pages, that the term Ci Freshwater Herring" is ap- 

 plied to the Char of several of the lakes in Connaught, and 

 from one of which an example before me is identical with the 

 fish of the English lakes. Examples of the Lough Melvin 



* The vertebrae reckoned in a male and female of the Loch Grannoch fish 

 were in the former 60, and in the latter 62 or 63 — this must be considered 

 an accidental variation. 



