326 LAKE SUPERIOR. 



The head is much depressed. The body is subcylindrical from the 

 occiput to the anus. The tail is also much compressed, and its 

 height diminishes quite insensibly from before backwards. 



The color is dark olive brown above, mottled with blackish brown ; 

 sowewhat yellow about the lower part of the abdomen, and whitish 

 underneath. 



From Michipicotin. 



It is very difficult to decide what are the characters which dis- 

 tinguish Lota compressa from Lota maculosa. It seems that the spe- 

 cies is generally smaller. Lesueur gives to it an upper jaw longer 

 than the lower, a character alternately given to it and L. maculosa 

 by the authors who have written after him. Whether the body is pro- 

 portionally shorter is to be verified anew, as also the greater com- 

 pression of the sides, and the back, which is said to be highest at 

 the basis of the dorsal fins. Lesueur adds, as a character, a more 

 elongated caudal, an equal dorsal and anal. 



The description of Dr. Storer, the only one which has been made 

 from nature since Lesueur, as it is not comparative, does not soive 

 the question. 



So long as the family of Salmonidne remains circumscribed as it 

 was established by Cuvier, it seems to be a type almost universally 

 diffused over the globe, occurring equally in the sea and in freshwater, 

 so that we are left almost without a clue to its natural relations to the 

 surrounding world. Joh. Miiller, working out some suggestions of 

 prince Canino, and introducing among them more precise anatomical 

 characters, had no sooner subdivided the old family of Salmonidae 

 into his Salmonidre, Characini and Scopelini, than light immediately 

 spread over this field. Limited now to such fishes as, in addition to 

 the mere general character of former Salmonidoe, have a false gill on 

 the inner surface of the operculum, the Salmonidse appeared at 

 once as fishes peculiar to the northern temperate region, occurring 

 in immense numbers all around the Arctic Sea, and running regu- 

 larly up the rivers at certain seasons of the year to deposit their 

 spawn, while some live permanently in freshwater. We have thus 

 in the true Salmonidse actually a northern family of fishes, which, 



