HAL.—The habits of the grayling, like those of most other fish, are very simple. He is, I believe, to a certain extent, gregarious—more so than the trout, and less so than the perch, and the usual varieties of the carp species known in England. His form and appearance you have seen. He is as yet scarcely in his highest or most perfect season, which is in the end of November or beginning of December, when his back is very dark, almost black, and his belly and lower fins are nearly gold-coloured; but his brightness, like that of most other fishes, depends a good deal upon the nature of the water: and on the continent I have seen fishes far more brilliantly coloured than in England—the lower part almost a bright orange, and the back fin approaching to the colour of the damask rose, or rather of an anemone. The grayling spawns in April, and sometimes as late as the beginning of May: the female is generally then followed by two or three males. She deposits her ova in the tales of sharp streams, and the males, rubbing against her, shed upon the ova the melt or semi-fluid. I do not know how long a time is required for the exclusion of the young ones; but in the end of July, or beginning of August, they are of the size of sprats, four or five inches long, and already sport merrily at a fly. Though I have often taken grayling in bad season, yet I have rarely observed upon them the same kind of leech,[7] or louse, which is so often found upon the trout; from which I infer, that they seldom hide themselves, or become torpid in the mud. The grayling hatched in May or June, I conclude, become the same year, in September or October, nine or ten inches long, and weigh from _five ounces_ to _half a pound_; and the year after they are from twelve to fifteen inches long, and weigh from three-quarters to a pound; and these two sizes, as you have seen, are the fish that most usually rise at the fly. The first size in this river is called _shote_, which is a Celtic word, I believe, applied likewise in the west of England to small trout. Of their growth after the second year I cannot speak; this must depend much on their food and place of residence. Marsigli says, they do not grow after the third year, and at this age, in Austria, they are sometimes a cubit long; but though I have fished much in that country, I never saw any so long. If they are taken into new and comparatively still water recently made, and where food is plenty, they grow very fast: under these circumstances, I have seen them above 3lbs. In the Test, where, as I mentioned before, the grayling has been only recently introduced, they have sometimes been caught between 3 and 4lbs.—in this river I never took one above 2lbs. but I have heard of one being taken of 2½lbs. The grayling is a rare fish in England, and has never been found in Scotland and Ireland (as Poietes observed before;) and there are few rivers containing all the conditions necessary for their increase.