The trout, likewise, has larger and more black and brown spots on the body; and the head of the trout is rather larger in proportion. The salmon has 14 spines in the pectoral fins, 10 in each of the ventral, 13 in the anal, 21 in the caudal, and 15 in the dorsal. The salmon measures 38 inches in length, and 21 inches in girth, and his weight is 22 lbs. you see. The trout has one spine less in the pectoral and two less in the anal fin, and measures 30 inches in length, and 16 inches in girth, and his weight is 11lbs. We will now open them. The stomach of the salmon, you see, contains nothing but a little yellow fluid, and, though the salmon is twice as large, does not exceed much in size that of the trout. The stomach of the trout, unlike that of the salmon, is full of food: we will open it. See, there are half digested sand eels which come out of it. PHYS.--But surely the stomachs of salmon must sometimes when opened contain food? HAL.-I have opened ten or twelve, and never found anything in their stomachs but tape worms, bred there, and some yellow fluid; but I believe this is generally owing to their being caught at the time of migration, when they are travelling from the sea upwards, and when they do not willingly load themselves with food. Their digestion seems to be very quick, and their habits seem to show, that after having taken a bait in the river they do not usually offer to take another, till the work of digestion is nearly performed; but when they are taken at sea, and in rivers in the winter, food, I am told, is sometimes found in their stomachs. The sea trout is a much more voracious fish, and, like the land trout, is not willingly found with an empty stomach. PHYS.-I presume the sea trout is the fish called by Linnæus, in his Fauna, Salmo Eriox? HAL.-I know not: but I should rather think that fish a variety of the common salmon. -- PHYS. But there are surely other species of salmon that live in the sea and come into our rivers: I have heard of fish called greys, bull trout, scurfs, morts, peales, and whitlings. HAL. I have never been able to identify more than the salmo salac, or salmon, and salmo trutta, or sea trout, in the rivers of Britain and Ireland. The whitlings, I believe to be the young of the sea trout. A sea trout which I saw in Ireland, called a bull trout, was of the same kind as these you see here, but fresh water trout are sometimes carried in floods to the sea, and come back larger and altered in colour and form, and are then mistaken for new species; and as each river possesses a peculiar variety belonging to it, this, with differences depending upon food and size, will, I think, account for the peculiarities of particular fish, without the necessity of supposing them distinct species. I remember many years ago, the first time I ever fished for salmon in spring in the Tweed, I caught with the fly, one fine morning in March, two fish nearly of the same length: one was a male fish of the last season, that had lost its melt; the other a female fresh from the sea. They were so unlike, that they did not appear of the same species: the spent or kipper salmon was long and lean, showing an immense head, spotted all over with black and brown spots, and the belly almost black; the other bright and silvery, without spots, and the head small. Even the pectoral and anal fins had more spines in the newly run fish, some of the smaller ones having been probably rubbed off in spawning by the other. I would not for some time, till assured by an experienced fisherman, believe that the spent fish was a salmon; and when their flesh was compared on the table, one was white, flabby, and bad, and without curd; the other of the brightest pink, and full of dense curd. Then, though of the same length, one weighed only 4lbs. the other 9 lbs. When it is recollected that different salmon and sea trout spawn at different times in the same river, and that fish of the same year being born at different seasons, from Christmas to Lady-day,—and having migrated to the sea in spring-run up the rivers of all sizes in summer and autumn-the young salmon from 2 to 10lbs. in weight, the young sea trout from to 3lbs. in weight—it is not difficult to account for the variety of names given by casual observers to individuals of these two species. |