g54 
THE CHARS. 
for that season. Another name, the Gilt Char, has also been 
sometimes applied to this variety, on the slight supposition of 
its occasionally having a gilded appearance. 
Pennant had examined some of these fishes, and although he 
noticed some important diflferences among them, both of form 
and habit, yet he could not decide finally on the presence of 
any essential distinction, so that his account of the Chars is 
confined to what he believed to be a single species. Fleming 
is of a different opinion from the forementioned writers, and 
describes as distinct species what he calls the Torgoch, which 
is his Salmo sahelinus, and the Case Char, which he calls 
S. alpinus; but he remarks, “Though the observations of 
Donovan have advanced considerably the history of this species, 
(the Case Char,) and the Torgoch, there is yet wanting more 
complete elucidation of their characters and manners.” In the 
first edition of his “History of British Fishes” Mr. Yarrell 
was disposed to favour the opinion of Dr. Fleming; but this 
was afterwards changed, and although the figures of apparently 
different species are still given, the belief is expressed that 
they are only casual variations of a single one. This fluctuation 
of opinion among eminent naturalists may be received as a 
proof of considerable resemblance which at least some of the 
Chars bear to each other, as it is also of a proneness to 
variation in them both of shape and colour; which latter, as 
we shall see, forms a considerable character of this family of 
fishes; and to what extent these variations of opinion have 
influenced the minds of the commissioners appointed by royal 
authority to collect information on the subject of the Salmon 
fisheries in the year 1861, will appear from a note in their 
recommendations of what in future should be the state of the 
law; in which they seem not to be aware of even the probability 
of there being more than a single species of Char in the 
United Kingdom, and this they say in England is found only 
in the lake district of Cumberland and Westmoreland, where 
their spawning season extends from October to March. Acting 
on this theory, and connecting it with their views of the 
Salmon fishery, they are thus led to recommend that it shall 
be forbidden to take Chars after the beginning of September, 
which is, in fact, to render it unlawful to catch them at the 
only season when the fishery can be conducted with profit. 
