COMMON TROUT. 
231 
of a rich dark brown, with an aggravation of the other 
characteristic tints. It is believed that these migratory examples 
in no long time return to their native river; at which season 
again their appearance is so changed that they have been judged 
a distinct species; and we believe that they are the same which 
Dr. Knox has denominated the Estuary Trout. 
It IS not easy to ascertain the age to which a Trout may 
reach, and Lord Bacon assigns it a limited date, but without 
giving any evidence on the subject. We know the dangers 
to which all of Salmon family are exposed; so that few 
of them can be supposed to live out half their days. But an 
exception has been made in two or three instances in favour 
of some examples of the Trout; and we are informed that a 
farmer near Pontypool had a fish of this kind captive in his 
well for twenty-seven years; during which time it had not 
increased in size. And this is exceeded by one mentioned by 
Daniel, in the Supplement to his “Rural Sports,” which is 
recorded to have lived for twenty-eight years in a well at 
Dumbarton Castle, and which was the weight of a pound when 
first conveyed thither; but even this is greatly exceeded by an 
instance mentioned by Mr. Yarrell, where a Trout is said to 
have lived at Broughton, in Furness, for fifty-three years. 
Daniel’s account of this fish of Dumbarton Castle may be 
thought interesting by those who have not had an opportunity 
of seeing the original work. He says that “the Garrison of 
Dumbarton Castle, in Scotland, was thrown into general 
lamentation by the sudden loss of its oldest veteran, who had 
served therein, a general favourite, for the long period of 
twenty-eight years.” It was “a Trout, which having been caught 
by an oflicer in the river Severn, was put into the garrison 
well, that flows to the surface, where in time it became so tame 
as to receive its food of bread from the hands of the soldiery, 
in the water. When first taken it weighed little more than a 
pound, and it never afterwards increased in size ” The instance 
here given was a case of solitary, and therefore might be supposed 
unnatural confinement; but the same writer mentions an instance 
where a Trout of large size had been known in a district of 
the Clyde for almost twenty years, during which “it eluded 
every artifice that the ingenuity of the sportsman had devised” 
for taking it. It at last left its usual haunts in conseq^uence 
