a clean fresh salmon shall sell from a shilling to eighteen-pence a pound; and most of the time that this part of the trade is carried on, the prices are from five to nine shillings per stone*, the value rising and falling according to the plenty of fish, or the prospect of a fair or foul wind †. Some fish are sent in this manner to London the latter end of September, when the weather proves cool, but the fish are then full of large roes, grow very thin-bellied, and are not esteemed either palatable or wholesome, The price of fresh fish, in the month of July, when they are most plentiful, has been known to be as low as 8d. per stone. "The season for fishing in the Tweed begins Nov. the 30th, but the fishermen work very little till after Christmas. It ends on Michaelmas day; yet the corporation of Berwick (who are the conservators of the river) indulge the fishermen with a fortnight past that time, on account of the change of the style. There are on the river forty-one considerable fisheries, extending upwards, about fourteen miles from the mouth (the others being of no great value,) which are rented for near L. 5400 per annum. The expense attending the servants' wages, nets, boats, &c. amounts to L. 5000 more, which together makes up the sum of L. 10,400. Now in consequence the produce must defray all, and no less than twenty times the sum of fish will effect it, so that 208,000 salmon must be caught there, one year with another." The general length of the salmon is from two and a-half to three feet, but sometimes much more: the male is principally distinguished by the curvature of the jaws; both the upper and lower mandible bending towards each other more or less in different individuals, and at different seasons. The general colour of both sexes is a silvery grey, of much darker cast on the back: the sides of the male are marked with numerous small, irregular, dusky and copper-coloured spots; while those of the female exhibit * A stone of salmon weighs 18lb. 20 ounces and a half; or, in other terms, four stones, or forty-six pounds avoirdupoise, is only three stones, or 42lb. fish-weight at Berwick. + The salmon sent from Berwick to London are, at present, generally packed in ice, which is preserved in ice houses throughout the winter for that purpose. It is said to be sometimes found of the length of six feet. Mr. Pennant mentions one of seventy-four pounds weight as the largest he ever heard of. only several rather large, distant, roundish, or somewhat lunated spots of a dark colour. Exclusive of these differences, the male is of a somewhat longer or more slender shape than the female : the scales in the salmon are middle-sized, and not very strongly adherent. In the intestinal canal of the salmon is often found a species of tænia or tape-worm, of about three feet in length. Dr. Bloch informs us, that in a salmon which had been three weeks dead, he found one of these worms still living. [Bloch. Pennant. Shaw. SECTION XII. Trout. Salmo fario.-LINN. THE trout is an inhabitant of clear and cold streams and lakes, in most parts of Europe, and admits of considerable variety as to the tinge both of its ground-colour and spots. Its general length is from twelve to fifteen, or sixteen inches, and its colour yellowish-grey, darker or browner on the back, and marked on the sides by several rather distant, round, bright, red spots, each surrounded by a tinge of pale blue-grey. Sometimes the ground-colour of the body is a purplish grey; the red spots much larger, more or less mixed with black; and the belly of a white or silvery cast: the fins are of a pale purplish brown; the dorsal fin marked with several darker spots: the head is rather large, the scales small, and the lateral line straight. The female fish is of a brighter and more beautiful appear ance than the male. It is a matter of surprise that this common fish has escaped the notice of all the ancients, except Ausonius: it is also singular, that so delicate a species should be neglected, at a time when the folly of the table was at its height; and that the epicures should overlook a fish that is found in such quantities in the lakes of their neighbourhood, when they ransacked the universe for dainties. The milts of murana were brought from one place; the livers of scari from another; and oysters even from so remote a spot as our Sandwich; but there was and is a fashion in the article of good living. The Romans seem to have despised the trout, the piper, and the doree; and we believe Mr. Quin himself would have resigned the rich paps of a pregnant sow, the heels of camels §, and the tongues of flamingos ||, though dressed by Heliogabalus's cooks, for a good jowl of salmon with lobster-sauce. When Ausonius speaks of this fish, he makes no eulogy on its goodness, but celebrates it only for its beauty. Purpureisque SALAR stellatus tergore guttis. With purple spots the SALAR'S back is stain'd. These marks point out the species he intended: what he meant by his fario is not so easy to determine: whether any species of trout, of a size between the salar and the salmon; or whether the salmon itself, at a certain age, is not very evident. Teque inter geminos species, neutrumque et utrumque, SALMON OF SALAR, I'll pronounce thee neither : In fact, the colours of the trout, and its spots, vary greatly in different waters, and in different seasons; yet each may be reduced to one species. In Llyndivia, a lake in South Wales, are trouts called coch y dail, marked with red and black spots as big as sixpences; others unspotted, and of a reddish hue, that sometimes weigh near ten pounds, but are bad tasted. In Lough Neagh, in Ireland, are trouts called there buddaghs, which not unfrequently weigh thirty pounds: but it was not my fortune to see any during my stay in the neighbourhood of that vast water. *Suetonius vita, Vitellii. Martial, Lib. XIII. Epig. 44. Juvenal, Sat. IV. 141. Trouts (probably of the same species) are also taken in Hulsewater, a lake in Cumberland, of a much superior size to those of Lough Neagh. These are supposed to be the same with the trout of the lake of Geneva, a fish many have eaten who think but a very indifferent one. In the river Eynion, not far from Machyntleth, in Merionethshire, and in one of the Snowdon lakes, are found a variety of trout, which are naturally deformed, having a strange crookedness near the tail, resembling that of the perch before described. We dwell the less on these monstrous productions, as the Honourable Daines Barrington has already given an account of them in an ingenious dissertation on some of the Cambrian fish, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the year 1767. The stomachs of the common trouts are uncommonly thick and muscular. They feed on the shell-fish of lakes and rivers, as well as on small fish. They likewise take into their stomachs gravel, or small stones, to assist in comminuting the testaceous parts of their food. The trouts of certain lakes in Ireland, such as those of the province of Galway, and some others, are remarkable for the great thickness of their stomachs; which, from some slight resemblance to the organs of digestion in birds, have been called gizzards: the Irish name the species that have them Gillaroo trouts. These stomachs are sometimes served up to table, under the former appellation. It does not appear to me, that the extraordinary strength of stomach, in the Irish fish, should give any suspicion that it is a distinct species: the nature of the waters might increase the thickness; or the superior quantity of shell-fish, which may more frequently call for the use of its comminuting powers than those of our trout, might occasion this difference. I had opportunity of comparing the stomach of a great Gillaroo trout, with a large one from the Uxbridge river. The last, if I recollect, was smaller, and out of season; and its stomach, (notwithstanding it was very thick) was much inferior in strength to that of the former: but, on the whole, there was not the least specific difference between the two subjects. Trouts are most voracious fish, and afford excellent diversion to the angler: the passion for the sport of angling is so great in the neighbourhood of London, that the liberty of fishing in some of the streams in the adjacent counties, is purchased at the rate of ten pounds per annum. These fish shift their quarters to spawn; and, like salmon, make up towards the heads of rivers to deposit their roes. The under jaw of the trout is subject, at certain times, to the same curvature as that of the salmon. A trout taken in Llynallet, in Denbighshire, which is famous for an excellent kind, measured seventeen inches, its depth three and three quarters, its weight one pound ten ounces: the head thick; the nose rather sharp; the upper jaw a little longer than the lower; both jaws, as well as the head, were of a pale brown, blotched with black: the teeth sharp and strong; disposed in the jaws, roof of the mouth, and tongue, as is the case with the whole genus, except the gwyniad, which is toothless, and the grayling, which has none on its tongue. The back was dusky; the sides tinged with a purplish bloom, marked with deep purple spots, mixed with black, above and below the line, which was straight: the belly white. The dorsal fin was spotted; the spurious fin brown, tipped with red; the pectoral, ventral, and anal fins, of a pale brown; the edges of the anal fin white; the tail very little forked when extended. [Shaw. Pennant. SECTION XIII. Flying-Fish. Exocætus exiliens.-LINN. THE fishes of this genus, which are very few in number, are remarkable for the extreme length and size of their pectoral fins, by which they are enabled to spring occasionally from the water, and to support a kind of temporary flight or continued motion through the air, to the distance of two or three hundred feet; when, the fins becoming dry, they are again obliged to commit themselves to their own element. The species at present to be described is chiefly observed in the Mediterranean and Atlantic seas, where, according to an ingenious-naturalist," it leads a most miserable |