Some Account of the Charr-Fish, as Found in North-Wales. In a Letter from the Rev. Mr. Farrington, of Dinas, Near Caernarvon, to Mr. Thomas Collinson, of London. Communicated by Mr. Peter Collinson, F. R. S.

the whole a large plain of sand. A country fellow, who was present at so strange a sight, had the curiosity to touch this water, and thereby scalded the end of his fingers. The stones and sand, which remain wherever the inundation of the water reached, differ in nothing from the stones and the sand of the sea, and have even the same saltness. This account, however fabulous it appears, is most exactly true. After the water had done flowing, there sprung from the same opening a small stream of fire, which lasted for twenty-four hours. On Tuesday, about a mile below this opening, there arose another stream of fire, which being in breadth about 400 feet, like a river, began to overflow the adjoining fields, and actually continues with the same course, having extended itself about two miles, and seeming to threaten the neighbourhood. We remain therefore in the greatest fear and terror, and in continual prayers. XXXIV. Some Account of the Charr-Fish, as found in North-Wales. In a Letter from the Rev. Mr. Farrington, of Dinas, near Caernarvon, to Mr. Thomas Collinson, of London. Communicated by Mr. Peter Collinson, F. R. S. Read May 29, 1755. THIS species with us is called tor-goch, a compound of tor, the lower part of the belly, and goch, red; in English red-belly. This redness in the female, paler or deeper, according according to the season, resembles that of the fins of a roach, a fish very common in many rivers of England, though we have none of them in this country. The male is not adorned with that beautiful hue, yet he is finely shaded, and marbled upon the back and sides with black streaks, upon a kind of pellucid light sky-coloured ground. The make is that of a trout, but much more elegant and delicate; insomuch that the vulgar hereabouts affirm, that a charr is nothing else but a trout in high season. Certainly there is a very great likeness, though in one respect the charr seems nearly allied to the eel and the tench, in being very slimy; and the cure and potting of charrs well depends very much upon cleansing and draining them of this mucilaginous quality. Whether you boil, stew, or fry them, they taste like a trout, but much more simple and insipid. They appear with us but at one season of the year, about the winter-solstice; their stay is of a short continuance, as if an act of necessity, and they were in haste to be gone to some more remote and private habitations. Three lakes or large pools, at the foot of Snowden, afford being and subsistence to this remarkable finny race: two of them (in our Gwyddhelian Language) we call Llynian Llanberris; i.e. the pools or lakes of Llanberris, or the parish of Llanberris. The upper pool is called Llyn-Ucha, and the lower one Llyn-Isla. There is a communication between one and the other. About a fortnight in December the charrs make their appearance in both; never wandering far from the verge of these lakes, or the mouths of the rivers issuing from them; but traverse from one end to the other, and from shore to shore indifferently, or perchance as the wind fits, in great bodies; so that it is a common thing to take in one net twenty or thirty dozen at a night in this place; and not above ten or a dozen fish in all at any other. Thus in winter frosts and rigours, they sport and play near the margins of the flood, and probably deposit their spawn, and continue their kind; but in the summer- heats they keep to the deep and center of water, abounding in mud and large stones, as the shoaler parts do with gravel: Providence with-holding from mankind this delicious morsel, when it is least fit to eat; for after Christmas they are seen no more till the following year. But the shortness of their stay in the two above-mentioned waters is made some amends for by a succeeding, though as short a season, in a pool in my parish, to which we give the name of Quellyn, from an ancient family so called, situated hard-by; for the charr appears here immediately after Christmas; and some, though very few indeed, are taken in the trout-net, even at midsummer, or rather at the two trout-seasons in summer. 'Tis remarked, that the fish have a larger growth one year than another: and lastly, I may add, that the whole number of charrs annually taken in the two pools of Llanberris does not amount to an hundred dozen. XXXV.