148 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [MaR. 13 



city where all shades of transition are found from pure white to 

 tawny black. Those who have seen the flashing hordes on the 

 spawning beds, in all their glory of color and majesty of action, 

 l^ronounce it a spectacle never to be forgotten. 



Sunapee saibling kept in confinement entirely lose the sexual 

 instinct, and with it the wedding garment. So sensitive are the 

 females that their removal from the spawning beds to the State 

 Hatchery on the opposite shore "of the lake, only one mile 

 distant, seriously interferes with the maturing process, so that 

 it is impossible to secure eggs, the fish having frequently to be 

 returned to the water several times during the operation. 

 Hence, as far as possible, ripe specimens are selected on the 

 natural spawning beds, and there stripped rapidly and returned 

 to the lake. Instances are not exceptional in which females 

 refuse to part with their eggs and carry them over to the next 

 season. This tallies with Cholmondelej^-Pennell's suggestion 

 that some of the Windermere charr spawn in alternate years. 



Although a vigorous fighter, the white trout is very easily 

 injured, the prick of the hook often being followed by fatal 

 consequences, especially in young specimens. Hundreds are 

 thus unavoidably killed every summer. In this respect the 

 Sunapee charr is very unlike the blue-back of Maine, of which 

 Commissioner Stanley said : 



"They are a hardy fish and nearly as tenacious of life as 

 the eel or bull-head. I have frequently seen them alive in the 

 morning after lying all night on the shore." 



One other phase of Aureolus life is a marked tendency to 

 deformity. Remarkable differences in shape, as well as colora- 

 tion, are normal to the quadroons and octoroons of the Sunapee 

 spawning beds ; but these differences are sometimes carried to 

 the verge of distortion or even monstrosity. Humped backs 

 are not infrequent ; but the most repulsive, and at the same 

 time most common malformation is the shrinking of the mature 

 fish into an eel-like shape, with abdominal respiration and an 

 intensely reproachful human look in the cavernous eyes which 

 fix your gaze with a mysterious intelligence. The death scene 

 of such a fish will haunt one for days, tempting him to specula- 

 tion in the field of metempsj'chosis. 



Professor Garman has proclaimed his belief in the identity 

 of the Sunapee, Dan Hole, and Flood's Pond c/iarrs with the 

 European saibling, and that "the affinities of these forms are 

 closer to that saibling by way of an Atlantic steamer than by 

 way of Greenland and Iceland." 



Professor Jordan has said " the American charr is probably 

 not a distinct species, but native to the waters where it is now 



