1 86 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



shown by the natural granite dam at the outlet. It now discharges into the Connecti- 

 cut River; but until the receding ice of the last glacial epoch reached, in its sluggish 

 melt toward the north, the lower valley of the Sugar River, the mighty inland sea of 

 primeval times poured into the Merrimack over Newbury Summit, sixty feet higher 

 than the level of the present effluent. Through the Merrimack watershed, while the 

 valley of the Sugar River was as yet choked with glacial ice, the quaternary trout, if 

 of marine ancestr)', must have found their way into this mysterious lake, following 

 like man and the higher mammalia, but by watery channels, the retreating ice-fields, 

 and swarming into the basin of Sunapee, excavated anew for their reception by the 

 erosive power of the glacier, and filled with its melting snows. This quaternary charr, 

 or Alpine trout — represented in the saibling of the mountain lakes of Europe from 

 Austria to Spitzbergen, in the Dolly Varden {Malma) on both sides of Bering Sea, in 

 the pigmy blue-back of Maine {Oqiiassa), and in the large anadromous or sea-run 

 blue-back of Labrador — is believed to be the ancestral type from which our common 

 brook trout has differentiated. It has simply found in Lake Sunapee and F"lood's Pond 

 conditions for its survival — in the purity of the water (Sunapee, one and three-tenths 

 grains of solid matter to the gallon), in the dcptli of the water (both lakes over one 

 hundred feet), in the character of the bottom (white sand and gravel), in the tempera- 

 ture of the lower layers (Sunapee 38° Fahr. to 52° Fahr, according to depth and 

 season), and in the abundance of crustacean and fish food. 



The distinguishing features of the Sunapee charr are: The presence of a broad 

 row of teeth on the hyoid bone, between the lower extremities of the first two gill 

 arches ; the absence of mottling on the dark sea-green back and excessively developed 

 fins; inconspicuous yellow spots, without blue areola; a square or slightly emar- 

 ginate tail ; a small and delicately shaped head, diminutive aristocratic mouth, 

 liquid planetary eyes, and a generally graceful build ; a phenomenally brilliant nuptial 

 coloration, recalling the foreign appellations of "blood-red charr," " gilt charr," and 

 "golden saibling." As the October pairing time approaches, the Sunapee fish 

 becomes illuminated with the flushes of maturing passion. The steel green mantle 

 of the back and shoulders now seems to dissolve into a veil of amethyst, through 

 which the daffodil spots of mid-summer gleam out in points of flame, while below the 

 lateral line all is dazzling orange. The fins catch the hue of the adjacent parts, and 

 pectoral, ventral, anal, and lower lobe of caudal, are marked with a lustrous white band. 

 It is a unique experience to watch this American saibling spawning on the Sunapee 

 shallows. Here in all the magnificence of their nuptial decoration, flash schools of 

 painted beauties, circling in proud sweeps about the submerged boulders they would 

 select as the scenes of their loves — the poetry of an epithalamion in every motion — in 

 one direction, uncovering to the sunbeams in amorous leaps their golden-tinctured 



