to in a former conversation; but I shall repeat what I stated
before,—that qualities occasioned by food, peculiarities of water, &c.
are transmitted to the offspring, and produce varieties which retain
their characters as long as they are exposed to the same circumstances,
and only slowly lose them. Plenty of good food gives a silvery colour
and round form to fish, and the offspring retain these characters.
Feeding much on larvæ and on shell-fish thickens the stomach, and gives
a brighter yellow to the belly and fins, which become hereditary
characters. Even these smallest salmon trout have green backs, _only_
black spots, and silvery bellies; from which it is evident, that they
are the offspring of lake trout, or _lachs forelle_, as it is called by
the Germans; whilst the river trout, even when 4 or 5lbs., as we see in
one of these fish, though in excellent season, have red spots.—But why
that exclamation?
POIET.—What an immense fish! There he is!
HAL.—I see nothing.
POET.—At the edge of the pool, below the fall, I saw a fish, at least
two or three feet long, rising with great violence in the water, as if
in the pursuit of small fish; and at the same time I saw two or three
minnows or bleaks jump out of the water. What fish is it?—a trout? It
appeared to me too long and too slender for a trout, and had more the
character of a pike;—yet it followed, and did not, like a pike, make a
single dart.
HAL.—I see him: it is neither a pike nor a trout, but a fish which I
have been some time hoping and expecting to see here, below the fall—a
_salmo hucho_, or _huchen_. I am delighted, that you have an opportunity
of seeing this curious fish, and of observing his habits. I hope we
shall catch him.
POIET.—Catch him! we have no tackle strong enough.
HAL.—I am surprised to hear a salmon fisher talk so: yet he _is_ too
large to take a fly, and must be trolled for. We must spin a bleak for
him, or small fish, as we do for the trout of the Thames or the salmon
of the Tay. Ornither, you understand the arrangement of this kind of
tackle—look out in my book the strongest set of spinning hooks you can
find, and supply them with a bleak; and whilst I am changing the reel, I
will give you all the information (which, I am sorry to say, is not
much) that I have been able to collect respecting this fish from my own
observation or the experience of others. The hucho is the most predatory
fish of the salmo genus, and is made like an ill-fed trout, but longer
and thicker. He has larger teeth, more spines in the pectoral fin, a
thicker skin, a silvery belly, and dark spots only on the back and
sides—I have never seen any on the fins. The ratio of his length to his
girth is as 8 to 18, or, in well fed fish, as 9 to 20; and a fish, 18
inches long by 8 in girth, weighed 16,215 grains. Another, 2 feet long,
11 inches in girth, and 3 inches thick, weighed 4lbs. 2¼oz. Another, 26
inches long, weighed 5lbs. 5oz. Of the spines in the fins, the anal has
9, the caudal 20, the ventral 9, the dorsal 12, the pectoral 17: having
numbered the spines in many, I give this as correct. The fleshy fin
belonging to the genus is, I think, larger in this species than in any I
have seen. Bloch, in his work on fishes, states that there are black
spots on all the fins, with the exception of the anal, as a character of
this fish: and Professor Wagner informs me he has seen huchos with this
peculiarity; but, as I said before, I never saw any fish with spotted
fins—yet I have examined those of the Danube, Save, Drave, Mur, and
Izar: perhaps this is peculiar to some stream in Bavaria—yet the huchos
in the collection at Munich have it not. The hucho is found in most
rivers tributary to the Danube—in the Save and Laybach rivers always;
yet the general opinion is, that they run from the Danube twice a year,
in spring and autumn. I can answer for their migration in spring, having
caught several in April, in streams connected with the Save and Laybach
rivers, which had evidently come from the still dead water into the
clear running streams, for they had the winter leech, or louse of the
trout upon them: and I have seen them of all sizes, in April, in the
market at Laybach, from six inches to two feet long; but they are found
much larger, and reach 30, or even 40, pounds. It is the opinion of some
naturalists, that it is _only_ a fresh water fish; yet this I doubt,
because it is never found beyond certain falls—as in the Traun, the
Drave, and the Save; and, there can be no doubt, comes into these rivers
from the Danube; and probably, in its larger state, is a fish of the
Black Sea. Yet it can winter in fresh water; and does not seem, like the
salmon, obliged to haunt the sea, but falls back into the warmer waters
of the great rivers, from which it migrates in spring, to seek a cooler
temperature and to breed. The fishermen at Gratz say they spawn in the
Mur, between March and May. In those I have caught at Laybach, which,
however, were small ones, the ova were not sufficiently developed to
admit of their spawning that spring. Marsigli says, that they spawn in
the Danube in June. You have seen how violently they pursue their prey:
I have never taken one without fish in his stomach; yet, when small,
they will take a fly. In the Kleingraben, which is a feeder to the
Laybach river, and where they are found of all sizes—from 20lbs.
downwards—the little ones take a fly, but the large ones are too
ravenous to care about so insignificant a morsel, and prey like the
largest trout, often hunting in company, and chasing the small fish into
the narrow and shallow streams, and then devouring them.—But I see your
tackle is ready. As a more experienced angler in this kind of fishing,
you will allow me to try my fortune with this fish. I still see him
feeding; but I must keep out of sight, for he has all the timidity
peculiar to the salmo genus, and, if he catch sight of me, will
certainly not run at the bait.
ORN.—You spin the bleak for him, I see, as for a great trout. O! there!
he has run at it—and you have missed him. What a fish! You surely were
too quick, for he sprung out of the water at the bleak.
HAL.—I was not too quick; but he rose just as the bleak was on the
surface, and saw me.
POIET.—I think I see him moving in another part of the pool.
HAL.—You are right; he has run again at the bleak, but only as it shone
on the surface. He has taken it.
ORN.—He fights well, and runs towards the side where the rock is.
HAL.—Take the net and frighten him from that place, which is the only
one where there is danger of loosing him. He is clear now, and begins to
tire, and in a few minutes more he will be exhausted.—Now land him.
POIET.—A noble fish! But how like a trout—exactly like a sea trout in
whiteness, and I think in spots.
HAL.—He is much narrower, or less broad, as you would immediately
discover, if you had a sea trout here. But now we must try another pool,
or the tail of this; that fish was not alone, and at the moment he took
the bait, I think I saw the water move from the stir of another. Take
your rod and fit your own tackle, Ornither; half the glory of catching
this fish is yours, as you prepared the hooks. I see you are in earnest;
the blood mounts in your face. Oh! oh! Ornither! you have pulled with
too much violence, and broken your tackle. Alas! alas! the fish you
hooked was the consort of mine: he will not take again.
ORN.—The gut was bad, for I do not think I struck too violently. What a
loss! How hard, to let the first fish of the kind I ever angled for
escape me!
HAL.—There are probably more: try again.
ORN.—Behold! the loss was more owing to the imperfection of the tackle
than to my ardour; for the two end hooks only are gone, and you may see
the gut worn.
HAL.—The thing is done, and is not worth comment. If you can, let the
next fish that rises hook himself. When we are ardent, we are bad judges
of the effort we make; and an angler, who could be cool with a new
species of salmo, I should not envy. Now all is right again: try that
pool. There is a fish—ay! and another, that runs at your bait; but they
are small ones, not much more than twice as large as the bleak; yet they
show their spirit, and though they cannot swallow it, they have torn it.
Put on another bleak. There! you have another run.
ORN.—Ay, it is a small fish, not much more than a foot long; yet he
fights well.
HAL.—You have him, and I will land him. I do not think such a fish a bad
initiation into this kind of sport. He does not agitate so much as a
larger one, and yet gratifies curiosity. There, we have him. A very
beautiful fish; yet he has the leech, or louse, though his belly is
quite white.
ORN.—This fish is so like a trout, that, had I caught him when alone, I
should hardly have remarked his peculiarities; and I am not convinced,
that it is not a variety of the common trout, altered, in many
generations, by the predatory habits of his ancestors.
HAL.—How far the principle of change of character and transmission of
such character to the offspring will apply, I shall not attempt to
determine, and whether all the varieties of the salmo with teeth in
their mouth may not have been produced from one original; yet this fish
is _now_ as distinct from the trout, as the _char_ or the _umbla_ is;
and in Europe, it exists only below great falls in streams connected
with the Danube, and is never found in rivers of the same districts
connected with the Rhine, Elbe, or which empty themselves into the
Mediterranean; though trout are common in all these streams, and salmon
and sea trout in those connected with the ocean. According to the
descriptions of Pallas, it occurs in the rivers of Siberia, and probably
exists in those that run into the Caspian; and it is remarkable, that it
is not found where the eel is usual—at least this applies to all the
tributary streams of the Danube, and, it is said, to the rivers of
Siberia. Wherever I have seen it, there have been always coarse fish—as
chub, white fish, bleak, &c., and rivers containing such fish are its
natural haunts, for it requires abundance of food, and serves to convert
these indifferent poor fish into a better kind of nourishment for man.
We will now examine the interior of these fish. You see the stomach is
larger than that of a trout, and the stomachs of both are full of small
fish. In the larger one there is a chub, a grayling, a bleak, and two or
three small carp. The skin you see is thick; the scales are smaller than
those of a trout; it has no teeth on the palate, and the pectoral fin
has four spines more, which, I think, enables it to turn with more
rapidity. You will find at dinner, that, fried or roasted, he is a good
fish. His flesh is white, but not devoid of curd; and though rather
softer than that of a trout, I have never observed in it that
_muddiness_, or peculiar flavour, which sometimes occurs in trout, even
when in perfect season.
I shall say a few words more on the habits of this fish. The hucho, as
you have seen, preys with great violence, and pursues his object as a
foxhound or a greyhound does. I have seen them in repose: they lie like
pikes, perfectly still, and I have watched one for many minutes, that
never moved at all. In this respect their habits resemble those of most
carnivorous and predatory animals. It is probably in consequence of
these habits, that they are so much infested by lice, or leeches, which
I have seen so numerous in spring as almost to fill their gills, and
interfere with their respiration, in which case they seek the most rapid
and turbulent streams to free themselves from these enemies. They are
very shy, and after being hooked avoid the baited line. I once saw a
hucho, for which I was fishing, follow the small fish, and then the lead
of the tackle; it seemed as if _this_ had fixed his attention, and he
never offered at the bait afterwards. I think a hucho, that has been
pricked by the hook, becomes particularly cautious, and possesses, in
this respect, the same character as the salmon. In summer, when they are
found in the roughest and most violent currents, their fins
(particularly the caudal fin) often appear worn and broken; at this
season they are usually in constant motion against the stream, and are
stopped by no cataract or dam, unless it be many feet in height, and
quite inaccessible. In the middle of September I have caught huchos
perfectly clean in rapid cool streams, tributary to the Laybach and the
Sava rivers; and, from the small developement of their generative system
at this time, I have no doubt that they spawn in spring. On the 13th of
September, 1828, I caught, by spinning the dead small fish, three
huchos, that had not a single leech upon their bodies, and they were the
first fish of the kind I ever saw free from these parasites.
ORN.—I am so much pleased with my good fortune in catching this fish,
that I shall try all day to-morrow with the bait, for more of the same
kind.
HAL.—You may do so; but many of these fish cannot be caught; they
migrate generally when the water is foul, and, except in the spring and
autumn, do not so readily run at the bait. I was once nearly a month
seeking for one in rivers in which they are found, between the end of
June and that of July, without being able to succeed in even _seeing_
one alive; and as far as my information goes, the two places where there
is most probability of taking them, are at Laybach and Ratisbon, in the
tributary streams to the Sava, and in the Danube; and the best time, in
the first of these situations, is in March and April, and in the second,
in May. I am told, likewise, that the Izar, which runs by Munich, is a
stream where they may be caught, when the water is clear: but I have
never fished in this stream—it having been foul, either from rain, or
the melting of the snows, whenever I have been at Munich; but I have
seen in the fish-market at Munich very large huchos. Late in the autumn,
or in early spring, this river must be an interesting one to fish in, as
the _schill_, or _perca lucio perca_, and three other species of _perca_
are found in it—the zingel, the apron, and the _perca_ schratz—all fish
of prey, and excellent food. I have eaten them, but never taken them;
they are rare in European rivers, though not, like the hucho, peculiar
to the tributary streams of the Danube. The schill is found likewise in
the Sprey and in the Hungarian lakes, and, according to Bloch, the
zingel in the Rhone.
POIET.—I should like extremely to fish in the Izar: it is, I think, a
new kind of pleasure to take a new kind of fish, even though it is not
unknown to Natural Historians. But the most exquisite kind of angling,
in my opinion, would be that of angling in a river never fished in by
Europeans before; and I can scarcely imagine sport of a higher kind than
that which involves a triple source of pleasure—catching a fish,
procuring good food for the table, and making a discovery in Natural
History, at the same time. Sir Joseph Banks, who was always a great
amateur of angling, had often this kind of gratification. And to Captain
Franklin and Dr. Richardson, in their expedition to the Arctic Ocean,
when they were almost starving, what a delightful circumstance it must
have been, to have taken with a fly those large grayling, which they
mention, of a new species, equally beautiful in their appearance, and
good for the table!
HAL.—When a boy, I have felt an interest in sea fishing, for this
reason—that there was a variety of fish; but the want of skill in the
amusement—sinking a bait with a lead and pulling up a fish by main
force, soon made me tired of it. Since I have been a fly-fisher, I have
rarely fished in the sea, and then only with a reel and fine tackle from
the rocks, which is at least as interesting an amusement as that of the
Cockney fishermen, who fish for roach and dace in the Thames, which I
have tried twice in my life, but shall never try again.
PHYS.—You are severe on Cockney fishermen, and, I suppose, would apply
to _them only_, the observation of Dr. Johnson, which on a former
occasion you would not allow to be just: “Angling is an amusement with a
stick and a string; a worm at one end, and a fool at the other.” And to
yourself you would apply it with this change: “a fly at one end, and a
philosopher at the other.” Yet the pleasure of the Cockney Angler
appears to me of much the same kind, and perhaps more continuous than
yours; and he has the happiness of constant occupation and perpetual
pursuit in as high a degree as you have; and if we were to look at the
real foundations of your pleasure, we should find them, like most of the
foundations of human happiness—vanity or folly. I shall never forget the
impression made upon me some years ago, when I was standing on the pier
at Donegal, watching the flowing of the tide: I saw a lame boy of
fourteen or fifteen years old, very slightly clad, that some persons
were attempting to stop in his progress along the pier; but he resisted
them with his crutches, and, halting along, threw himself from an
elevation of five or six feet, with his crutches, and a little parcel of
wooden boats, that he carried under his arm, on the sand of the beach.
He had to scramble or halt at least 100 yards, over hard rocks, before
he reached the water, and he several times fell down and cut his naked
limbs on the bare stones. Being in the water, he seemed in an ecstacy,
and immediately put his boats in sailing order, and was perfectly
inattentive to the counsel and warning of the spectators, who shouted to
him, that he would be drowned. His whole attention was absorbed by his
boats. He had formed an idea, that one should outsail the rest, and when
this boat was foremost he was in delight; but if any one of the others
got beyond it he howled with grief; and once I saw him throw his crutch
at one of the unfavoured boats. The tide came in rapidly—he lost his
crutches, and would have been drowned, but for the care of some of the
spectators: he was however wholly inattentive to any thing save his
boats. He is said to be quite insane and perfectly ungovernable, and
will not live in a house, or wear any clothes, and his whole life is
spent in this one business—making and managing a fleet of wooden boats,
of which he is sole admiral. How near this mad youth is to a genius, a
hero, or to an angler, who injures his health and risks his life by
going into the water as high as his middle, in the hope of catching a
fish which he sees rise, though he already has a pannier full.
HAL.—Or a statesman, working by all means, fair and foul, to obtain a
blue ribband. Or a fox-hunter, risking his neck to see the hounds
destroy an animal, which he preserves to be destroyed, and which is good
for nothing. Or an aged, licentious voluptuary, using all the powers of
a high and cultivated intellect to destroy the innocence of a beautiful
virgin—for a transient gratification to render her miserable, and by
making a flaw in an inestimable and brilliant gem, utterly to destroy
its value.
PHYS.—You might go on and cite almost all the objects of pursuit of
rational beings, as, by distinction, they are called. But to return to
your favourite amusement. I wonder, that, with such a passion for
angling, you have never made an expedition in one of our whalers—with
Captain Scoresby for instance: you would then have enjoyed sport of a
new kind.
HAL.—I should like much to see a whale taken, but I do not think the
sight worth the dangers and privations of such a voyage. It would only
be an amusing spectacle and not an enterprise, unless indeed I employed
myself the harpoon; and after all it must be a tedious operation, that
of watching the sinking and rising of a fish obedient to a natural
instinct, which, in this instance, is the cause of his death.
POIET.—How?
HAL.—The whale, having no air bladder, can sink to the lowest depths of
the ocean, and, mistaking the harpoon for the teeth of a sword fish or a
shark, he instantly descends, this being his manner of freeing himself
from these enemies, who cannot bear the pressure of a deep ocean, and
from ascending and descending in small space, he puts himself in the
power of the whaler; where as, if he knew his force, and were to swim on
the surface in a straight line, he would break or destroy the machinery
by which he is arrested, as easily as a salmon breaks the single gut of
a fisher when his reel is entangled.
POIET.—My amusement in such a voyage would be to look for the kraken and
the sea snake.
HAL.—You have a vivid imagination, and might see them.
POIET.—Then you do not believe in the existence of these wonderful
animals?
HAL.—No more than I do in that of the merman, or mermaid.
POIET.—Yet we have histories, which seem authentic, of the appearance of
these monsters, and there are not wanting persons who assert, that they
have seen the mermaid even in these islands.