SLENDER SALMON. 
with your letter, and kind remembrance of me. I have a skin 
of a Salmon that would have been a good match for your 
female. This was a Salmon that had been detained in a fresh- 
water pond rather more than three years, and he had in that 
time become in form more like an eel than a Salmon. I have 
also in my drawer a sf)ecimen of a Salmo Trutto almost as 
much elongated, but I had no opportunity of ascertaining any 
cause for this ehange, but probably, as in the case of your 
fish, destined to live in a river, the water of which did not 
suit it.” 
It is not generally safe to dififer in opinion from that excellent 
naturalist, and especially in reference to fish of fresh water; 
but on the present occasion it should be remarked that the 
known circumstances were very different from those that were 
thus suggested. So far from having suffered from long confine- 
ment, the effect of which on the true Salmon is highly 
suggestive, this example was caught when it had just then 
come from the open sea. The Kiver Fowey also is not polluted 
with poisonous water from mines, as are many other streams in 
Cornwall; and further, at no great distance of time before this 
a specimen distinguished by similar characters, presently to be 
described, was taken in the Looe, under the same circumstances; 
and it should be further observed that at that time the last- 
named river had not suffered from the copper and mundic water 
which now flows into it. As regards the rarity of this fish, 
with us of the west it does not appear to be less common than 
the Salmon Trout itself; and on Dr. Fleming’s authority I do 
not hesitate to say, that however thinly scattered, it has been 
met with more than once at the two extremities of the united 
kingdom. 
The length of this fish was two feet four inches and a quarter; 
from the snout to the border of the gill-covers (all measured 
in a straight line) five inches; girth round the body, which 
was little compressed, and nearly round, one foot one inch and 
a quarter. Teeth in the upper jaw and mystache strong, 
scattered, and incurved; a row round the palate, incurved towards 
the palate; none in the vomer, nor did it appear there had 
ever been any. The colour dull, with a tendency to blue, and 
a tinge of pink along the sides. Rather numerous blackish 
spots, with radii in three or four rays, and no light border 
VOL. IV. 2 F 
