On the Salmon Tribe. 147 



two or three species of trout occur together, each with pecu- 

 Kar habits ; one more migratory, running up rivers during 

 the spawning season, &;c., while the other will never enter 

 running waters, and will spawn in quiet places near the shore ; 

 one will hunt after its prey, while the other will wait for it in 

 ambuscade ; one will feed upon fish, the other upon insects. 

 Here we have an example of species with different habits, 

 where there would scarcely seem to be room for diversity in the 

 physical condition in which they live ; again, there are others 

 living together in immense sheets of water, where there would 

 seem to be ample scope for diversity, among which we observe 

 no great differences, as is the case between the Siscowet and 

 the lake trout in the great northern lakes. 



If these facts, statements, and inductions were not sufficient 

 to satisfy the reader of the correctness of my views, I would 

 at once refer to another material fact, furnished us by the 

 family of SalmonidcB, namely, the existence of two essential 

 modifications of the true type of trouts, occurring everywhere 

 together under the same circumstances, showing the same 

 general characters, back-bones, skull, brain, composition of 

 the mouth, intestines, gills, &c., &c., but differing in the size 

 of the mouth, and in the almost absolute want of teeth, these 

 groups being that of the white fishes, Coregoniy and that of 

 the true trouts, Salmones. 



Now, I ask, where is there, within the natural geogra- 

 phical limits of distribution of Salmonidw^ a discriminating 

 power between the physical elements under which they live, 

 which could have introduced these differences 1 — a discrimi- 

 nating power which, allotting to all certain characters, should 

 have modified others to such an extent as to produce appa- 

 rently different types under the same modification of the 

 general plan of structure. Why should there be, at the same 

 time, under the same circumstances, under the same geogra- 

 phical distribution, white fishes with the habits of trouts, — 

 spawning like them in the fall, growing their young like them 

 during winter, — if there were not an infinitely wise Supreme 

 Power, if there were not a personal God, who, having first 

 designed, created the universe, and modelled our solar system, 

 called successively, at different epochs, such animals into 



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