bird is like the bobolink. Gross feeding and easy pond life enervate and deprave him. The trout that the children will know only by legend is the gold-springled living arrow of the white water; able to zigzag up the cataract; able to loiter in the rapids; whose dainty meat is the glancing butterfly."

The brook-trout adapts itself readily to cultivation in artificial ponds. It has been successfully transported to Europe, and is already abundant in certain streams in England and elsewhere.

The "Dolly Varden" Trout (Salvelinus malma) is very similar to the brook-trout, closely resembling it in size, form, color, and habits. It is found in the streams of northern California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Alaska, and Kamtschatka, mostly to the westward of the Cascade Range. It often enters the sea, and specimens of eleven pounds' weight have been obtained by the writer in Puget Sound. The Dolly Varden trout is, in general, deeper in body, and less compressed than the Eastern brook-trout. The red spots are found on the back of the fish as well as on the sides, and the back and upper fins are without the marblings and blotches seen in Salvelinus fontinalis. In value as food, in beauty, and in gaminess, Salvelinus malma is very similar to its Eastern cousin.

Allied to the true charrs, and now placed by us with them in the genus Salvelinus, is the Great Lake Trout, otherwise known as Mackinaw Trout, Longe, or Togue (Salvelinus namaycush). Technically, this fish differs from the true charrs in having on its vomer a raised crest behind the chevron, and

free from the shaft. This crest is armed with strong teeth. There are also large hooked teeth. on the hyoid bone, and the teeth generally are proportionately stronger than in most of the other species. The great lake-trout is grayish in color, light or dark according to its surroundings; and the body is covered with round paler spots, which are gray instead of red. The dorsal and caudal fins are marked with darker reticulations, somewhat as in the brook-trout. The great lake-trout is found in all the larger lakes from New England and New York to Wisconsin, Montana, and Alaska. It reaches a much larger size than any other Salvelinus, specimens of from fifteen to twenty pounds' weight being not uncommon, while it occasionally attains a weight of fifty to eighty pounds. As a food-fish it ranks high, although it may be regarded as somewhat inferior to the brook-trout or the white-fish. Compared with other salmonoids, the great lake-trout is a sluggish, heavy, and ravenous fish. It has been known to eat raw potato, liver, and corn-cobs, refuse thrown from passing steamers. According to Herbert, "a coarse, heavy, stiff rod, and a powerful oiled hempen or flaxen line, on a winch, with a heavy sinker; a cod-hook, baited with any kind of flesh, fish, or fowl, is the most successful, if not the most orthodox or scientific, mode of capturing him. His great size and immense strength alone give him value as a fish of game; but when hooked, he pulls strongly and fights hard, though he is a boring, deep fighter, and seldom if ever leaps out of the water, like the true salmon or brook-trout."

In the depths of Lake Superior is a variety of the great lake-trout known as the Siscowet (Salvelinus namaycush siskawitz), remarkable for its extraordinary fatness of flesh. The cause of this difference lies probably in some peculiarity of food, as yet unascertained.

THE DISPERSION OF FRESH-WATER

WHEN

FISHES.

THEN I was a boy and went fishing in the brooks of western New York, I noticed that the different streams did not always have the same kinds of fishes in them. Two streams in particular in Wyoming County, not far from my father's farm, engaged in this respect my special attention. Their sources are not far apart, and they flow in opposite directions, on opposite sides of a low ridge, - an old glacial moraine, something more than a mile across. The Oatka Creek flows northward from this ridge, while the East Coy runs toward the southeast on the other side of it, both flowing ultimately into the same river, the Genesee.

It does not require a very careful observer to see that in these two streams the fishes are not quite the same. The streams themselves are similar enough. In each the waters are clear and fed by springs. Each flows over gravel and clay, through alluvial meadows, in many windings, and with elms and alders "in all its elbows." In both streams we were sure of finding Trout,1 and in one of them the trout are still abundant. In both we used to catch the Brook Chub,2 or, as we called 1 Salvelinus fontinalis Mitchill. 2 Semotilus atromaculatus Mitchill.

it, the "Horned Dace; and in both were large schools of Shiners1 and of Suckers.2 But in every deep hole, and especially in the mill-ponds along the East Coy Creek, the Horned Pout swarmed on the mucky bottoms. In every eddy, or in the deep hole worn out at the root of the elm-trees, could be seen the Sun-fish, strutting in green and scarlet, with spread fins keeping intruders away from its nest. But in the Oatka Creek were found neither Horned Pout nor Sun-fish, nor have I ever heard that either has been taken there. Then besides these nobler fishes, worthy of a place on every school-boy's string, we knew by sight, if not by name, numerous smaller fishes, Darters 5 and Minnows, which crept about in the gravel on the bottom of the East Coy, but which we never recognized in the Oatka.

There must be a reason for differences like these, in the streams themselves or in the nature of the fishes. The Sun-fish and the Horned Pout are home-loving fishes to a greater extent than the others which I have mentioned; still, where no obstacles prevent, they are sure to move about. There must be, then, in the Oatka some sort of barrier, or strainer, which keeping these species back permits others more adventurous to pass; and a wider knowledge of the geography of the region showed that such is the case.

1 Notropis megalops Rafinesque.

2 Catostomus teres Mitchill.

8 Ameiurus melas Rafinesque.

4 Lepomis gibbosus Linnæus.

5 Etheostoma flabellare Rafinesque.

6 Rhinichthys atronasus Mitchill.

Farther