170 
MALACOPTERYGII. 
Town ; but within the last few years they have been pulled down to make way 
for “the park’s extended bounds.”* 
In the months of November and December this fish deposits its spawn 
where the lake presents a hard or rocky bottom. On the 4th of December, 
1835, a quantity of the largest pollans I have seen were brought to Belfast 
market. Several which I obtained for examination were 13 inches in length, 
and all on dissection proved to be females. Most of them were in full roe 
(the ova from -^th to g-th of an inch in diameter), but some had partly shed it ; 
one of the former was in total weight 9§ oz., the roe alone weighing 2§ oz. In 
the others the proportion of roe was similar. On the 11th of the same month, 
several male specimens of full size that I procured, and which contained milt 
most prominently developed, measured but llg inches. Thus showing that in 
maturity the female fish exceeds the male in length, in the proportion of 13 to 
Its average weight when in season is about 6 oz. One specimen, men- 
tioned to me as the largest taken within the last ten years, weighed 2| lbs. The 
only food that I have, without resorting to the microscope, detected in the sto- 
mach of the pollan was a full-grown specimen of the bivalve shell Pisidium pul- 
chellum. A pebble of equal size was also found along with it. In one which I 
had the pleasure of sending to Mr. Yarrell, he met with a species of Gamma- 
ms. f — Yarr. Brit. Fishes, vol. ii. 
The Buddagh, or Great Lake Trout, is occasionally taken on night lines baited 
with the pollan ; for which purpose the perch, divested of its spinous dorsal fin, 
is also used. The lesser black-backed gull (Lams fiuscus, Linn.), which fre- 
quents the lake in considerable numbers, is, in consequence of being believed to 
subsist on this fish, called there commonly by the name of Pollan Gull. 
As yet the pollan is known to me only as inhabiting Lough Neagh. In 
Harris’s “ Down ” (p. 238), it is stated, “that Lough Erne, in the County of 
Fermanagh, has the same sort of fish, though not in so great plenty.” This is 
probably correct, as Lough Erne is of very considerable extent, ranking 
amongst the lakes of Ireland as the second in size ; being inferior only to Lough 
Neagh. 
Coregonus clupeoides, Nilsson ? Cunn. — In a letter from the Rev. T. 
Knox, of Toomavara, dated Jan. 29, 1838, and accompanying a specimen of a 
fish procured at my request, was the following observation : “We have at last 
been able to get the little fish mentioned by the fishermen as being found in 
the Shannon in winter — it was sent from Killaloe. I believe it goes down the 
river with the eels every winter; it takes no bait.” The Rev. C. Mayne of 
Killaloe — by whose" kind attention the specimen was secured — informs me, in 
reply to some queries, “ that it is called a Cunn by the fishermen of that place, 
who state that it is never taken but in the eel-nets about Christmas, when the 
‘run of eels’ is nearly over, and that they never saw more than seven or eight 
caught in a year, seldom indeed so many.” Killaloe, it should perhaps be 
stated, is not less than eighty miles from the mouth of the Shannon. In the 
hope of ascertaining the occurrence of this fish at Portumna, about twenty 
miles higher up the river, I wrote to a correspondent there, at the same time 
describing the species, and on the 24th of March last received the following re- 
ply. “I think it very uncertain whether there is such a fish in the Shannon, 
but still some old fishermen say there is, and that they are a little smaller than the 
common herring, but exactly the same shape and colour ; ” and he again observes, 
—“after making every inquiry, I learn that about half a dozen white fish, like 
* Shane’s Castle Park, near Antrim. 
f June 10, 1836. On opening the stomachs of six pollans, I found them all 
filled with food, consisting chiefly of mature individuals of Gammarus aquations , 
and the larvae of various aquatic insects ; some shells of the genus Pisidium , 
one of the fry of the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus) , and a feAV frag- 
ments of stone, also occurred. — W. T. (From Magazine Zoology and Botany, 
vol. i.) 
