FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 1 87 



sides, gemmed with the fire of rubies; in another, darting in little companies, the 

 pencilled margins of their fins seeming to trail behind them like white ribbons under 

 the ripples. There are conspicuous diflferences in intensity of general coloration, and 

 the gaudy dyes of the milter are tempered in the spawner to a dead-lustre cadmium 

 cream or olive chrome, with opal spots. The wedding garment nature has given to 

 this charr is unparagoned. Those who have seen the bridal march of the glistering 

 hordes, in all their glory of color and majesty of action, pronounce it a spectacle never 

 to be forgotten. That so conspicuous a game and food fish could have been aboriginal 

 to Lake Sunapee, and for one hundred years have escaped the notice alike of visit- 

 ing and resident anglers, persistent poachers, and alert scientists, is accounted for: 



First, by its habits, which protected it from observation and persecution. The 

 white trout rarely approached the surface, e.xcept during the last week of October and 

 the first week in November, when it appeared on the mid-lake reefs to spawn — a time 

 of year when angling is out of season, and in localities dangerous or impossible of 

 access in the old-style, unseaworthy flat-bottoms during the autumnal wind-storms. 

 The secluded habits of the European charrs explain in like manner the obscurity 

 which has so long involved the life history of those fishes. Moreover, ordinary fisher- 

 men recognized no diflference between the white and the brook trout, a thing not to 

 be wondered at when ichthyologists failed at first to separate the forms. 



Secondly, by the continuous exposure of the species to the ravages of the yellow 

 perch and the miller's thumb. Before the introduction of black bass in 1868, both 

 these enemies of trout were abundant in the lake and the connecting estuaries, and 

 there being at that time no smelt food, subsisted largely on the eggs and fry of the 

 lake-spawning charr. At the spring hatching season, the perch held carnival among 

 the helpless alevins, almost effecting, by their periodic havoc, the extermination of the 

 white trout. But as the black bass increased in number, they fell upon the perch in 

 turn, until the lake was virtually rid of this voracious pest. Thus the saibling, which 

 had been reduced to the verge of annihilation, had a chance to multiply. The black 

 bass do not interfere with it, for two reasons : 



First, both bass and trout have an abundance of easily caught and tasteful food 

 in the land-locked smelts, which have increased since their introduction, until now 

 they literally school in millions. 



Secondly, bass and trout are not found in the same sections of water at the same 

 time, the trout keeping in a temperature of 42" Fahr. to 50° Fahr. (on the surface in 

 May, sixty feet below in July and August) ; the bass preferring 65° Fahr. to 70" Fahr. 

 in summer, and hibernating in winter and during the spring hatching time of tne 

 trout. Thus freed from persecution on the part of the uraiiiiica and the pcrca Ameri- 

 cana, the saibling has increased, until it is now present in myriads. 



