igoi] Prink:e— Adaptation in Fishes. 215 



stunted, and weighed less than a quarter the weig^ht normally 

 reached at the age of the specimens referred to. The adaptability 

 of smelt (Osmerus mordax ) has long- been known. Nearly 

 seventy years J'go Col. Meynell acclimatised smelt and bred them 

 in a small sheet of water in England, and quite a number of lakes 

 in New Brunswick, Lake Utopia and others contain land-locked 

 smelt. 



Only one or two members of the cod family ( Gadidcc ) are 

 indigenous to fresh water. All the rest are marine, the fresh- 

 water species being the cusk or burbot, often called ling or 

 lawyer. The tom-cod ( Microgadus), while it prefers saline 

 or brackish, water can survive in a fresh-water environment, 

 and occurs in abundance in Lake St. Peter, below Montreal. 

 An allied form, the silver hake ( Merluccius bilmeansj is 

 recorded as abundant in Darling's Lake, near Rothesay, N.B., 

 attracted from the sea by the ascending schools of gaspereaux, 

 which are their favourite food. In the Baltic Sea, the 

 true cod, as well as the haddock, pollock, and other gadoids, 

 occur, but reach only one-quarter of the size which these 

 fishes attain in the sea. In the Bras d'Or Lakes cod are 

 I stated to be large (sometimes 56 or 58 pounds), but the head is of 

 disproportionate size, as though they were not well fed. They 

 are caught through the ice at Whycocomagh, far inland and in 

 water of low salinity. 



Of the herring tribe at least five species come up into fresh 

 water annually, and some have become land-locked like the gas- 

 pereaux or alewives ( Pomolobus pseudharengus ) of Lake Ontario 

 and Lakes Cayuga and Seneca (N. Y. State) and other inland 

 waters. They are often erroneously called shad or menhaden, and 

 they die in immense numbers in early summer owing to some un- 

 favourable circumstance connected, doubtless, with their non- 

 sea-going habit. True sea-herring are not known to be land- 

 locked in Canada ; but in Iceland and in the Baltic a fresh-water 

 variety occurs. Some of the Baltic herring were kept for a long 

 period in tanks by Professor Mcintosh in Scotland, the water sup- 

 plied to them being perfectly fresh. They were somewhat stunted. 

 Many fish when permanently shut off from the sea improve in 

 size and table qualities. Dr. J. C. Mitchell, an authority on the 



