248 SALMONID^ OF BRITAIN. 



rows pass from tlie back to the lateral-line. Colours — greenish along the back, 

 becoming lighter on the sides and beneath, the whole being beautifully shot with 

 purple and gold. Numerous round or oval spots along the back becoming fewer 

 below the lateral-line ; anteriorly from the head to the dorsal fin many coalesce. 

 Red spots above, on, and sometimes below the lateral-line. White edges with 

 black bases to the upper margin of the pectoral and the anterior edges of the 

 ventral and anal fins. Sinuous bands of black or rings on the dorsal fin: the upper 

 and lower edges of the caudal barred. During the breeding season the male is 

 black along the centre of the belly, and on turning the fish wrong side up this 

 appears like a black central band (interrupted by the yellow margins of the 

 ventral and anal fins) with a brilliant yellow one along either side of it. In some 

 the sinuous lines of the back merely extend half-way down to the lateral-line. 

 The female is rather more green, the sides lighter, and it is usually more spotted. 

 In the month of May, 1887, 1 was at the South Kensington Museum, and Mr. Eden 

 showed me some of these fish kept in darkish tanks. They were of a lovely 

 greenish purple, with two or three rows of small but intensely scarlet spots below 

 the lateral-line : the bands over the back were not well seen, but the par marks were 

 distinct in nearly all. They were three-year-olds and well grown. One male was 

 so pugnacious that he had to be confined in a separate aquarium. In these tanks 

 the water was kept clear, and a tussock of grass with its roots put in every third 

 day.* The number of par bands in the young at Howietoun vary between seven 

 and eleven or twelve, btit in some specimens they are much broken up— in others, 

 those on the lower half of the body are intermediate between the lower ends of 

 those of the upper half of the body. 



When the New England States were first peopled from Britain this fish was 

 called a " trout," for but few of the early emigrants could have had an oppor- 

 tunity of observing a "char," and they gave it the name that most nearly 

 reminded them of a form which existed in the mother-country. 



Mitchell, who first described it scientifically in 1814, remarked that this fish 

 "lived in running waters only, and not in stagnant ponds, and therefoi-e the 

 lively streams descending north and south from their sources in Long Island 

 exactly suit the constitution of this fish. The heaviest Long Island trout that I 

 heard of weighed 4^ lb." 



Mr. Perley, Catalogue of the Fishes of New Brnnsivich and Nova Scotia, 1851, 

 considered " that there is but one distinct species of the brook trout in North 

 America." 



Without following out the various and interesting accounts which have been 

 given of the Salmo font in alls in the United States and Canada, I propose to ofi^er 

 a brief synopsis of Mi\ Brown- Goode's excellent report on the subject in 

 Scribner's Game Fishes of the United States. It has its home between latitudes 

 32^° and 56° in the lakes and streams of the Atlantic watershed, near the 

 sources of a few rivers flowing into the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, and 

 in some of the southern affluents of Hudson's Bay. Its range is limited by the 

 western foothills of the Alleghanies, and nowhere extends more than three 

 hundred miles from the coast, except about the Great Lakes in the northern 

 tributaries of which trout abound. At the south they inhabit the headwaters of 

 the Chattahoochee, in the southern spurs of the Georgia Alleghanies, and 

 tributaries of the Catawba in North Carolina. They also occur in the Great 

 Islands in the Gulf of St. Laurence, Anticosti, Prince Edward's, Cape Breton, 

 and Newfoundland. They do not appear able to thrive in water warmer than 

 68° Fahr., although they have been known to live in swift running water at 

 75°. With water below 36° they ai-e torpid and refuse to feed. The identity of 

 the Canadian Sea Trout and the Brook Trout has been settled beyond a doubt. 

 There are many variations and local races of these fish, the same stream often 



* Livingston-Stone, Domesticated Trout, ed. 2, p. 296, observed, respecting this fish, that " if 

 you want to make the colours of trout deep and dark, grow them over a black muddy bottom, well 

 shaded. If you want to cultivate light and delicate tints, grow the trout on a light, open, gravelly 

 bed." Also, as to shape — " If you wish to have trout short and deep, grow them in a deep still 

 pond. If you want to have them long and slim, grow them in a shallow swift current." 



