THE BR O OK TR O UTS OR CHARS. 47 1 



Speckled Trout or Brook Trout of the East. Its home is between lati- 

 tudes $2)4° and 55 , in the lakes and streams of the Atlantic watershed, 

 near the sources of a few rivers flowing into the Mississippi and the Gulf 

 of Mexico, and in some of the southern affluents of Hudson Bay. Its 

 range is limited by the western foot-hills of the Alleghanies, and nowhere 

 extends more than three hundred miles from the coast, except about the 

 Great Lakes, in the northern tributaries of which Trout abound. At the 

 South it inhabits the headwaters of the Chattahoochee, in the southern 

 spurs of the Georgia Alleghanies, and tributaries of the Catawba in North 

 Carolina. It also occurs in the great islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence — 

 Anticosti, Prince Edward, Cape Breton and Newfoundland. 



Bean calls attention to the fact that although this species usually has 

 no trace of hyoid teeth, he has seen specimens from Labrador, about 10 

 per cent of which possessed a few (never more than three) weak teeth on 

 the hyoid bone, while occasional examples from New York and Massa- 

 chusetts show the same abnormality, and farther to the southward the 

 normal condition is permanent. 



Temperature is a prime factor in determining the distribution of this 

 species, and since few observations have been made in the field, our con- 

 clusions must needs rest on a study of the species in domestication, an 

 instructive though not entirely reliable method. The experience of 

 .Messrs. Green, Stone and Ainsworth, indicates that Trout cannot thrive 

 in water warmer than 68° Fahrenheit, though they have been known to 

 live in swift-running water at 75 . Fishes hatched in artificial ponds 

 may probably be inured to greater warmth than wild fishes can endure, 

 and it is doubtful whether the latter are often found in water warmer than 

 6o° or 65 °. At the Oquossoc and Cold Spring hatching establishments 

 the water ranges from 45 ° to 49 throughout the year. Below 36 Trout 

 are torpid and refuse to feed, and instances are on record of their reviv- 

 ing after being frozen stiff. The remarkable variations in the habits of 

 Trout in different regions are easier to understand in the light of these 

 facts. In the Long Island region Trout live in salt water in the coldest 

 months, when its temperature is below 50 . North of the Bay of Fundy, 

 at the entrance of which the water barely registers 50 in midsummer, 

 they inhabit the ocean abundantly, except at the spawning time. South 

 of New York the coast-reaches of the rivers appear to present a barrier of 

 warm water which the Salmon do not seek to penetrate from without, and 



