2G THE GAME FISH OF NORTH AMERICA. 



Trout, ;\nd sucli of the Brook Trout as are found in small streams 

 above impracticable falls, or in spring ponds, or lakes without outlets, 

 are stationary, or non-migratory ; and the consequences of their habit 

 may be very readily discovered in the inferiority of their flesh, both 

 in color and firmness of muscle, and in their comparatively lazy gait, 

 and want of game qualities, vigor and endurance. 



Of other soft-finned fishes, the Smelt, Osvicms Vlridcscens^ the Shad, 

 Alosa Prccsfahi/is, and the Herring, Clwpea Ilarengus, are migratory 

 from salt to fresh-water, and so pci'haps is the Weak-Fish, in the 

 Southern waters, there misnamed Trout,* OtoUthvs Carolinensis. 



The White-Fish, Coregonus Alius, and the Otsego Bass, Coregonus 

 Otsego, are partially migratory from the deeper waters of the lakes 

 which they inhabit. All the Slht?-idce., Cyprinidce, and Esocidcc, are 

 stationary fish. 



Tliree or four of the above species and varieties I have admitted 

 with no small doubt ; and first of these, in the family Salmonirla, the 

 Common Lake Trout,"]" Salmo Conftuis, of DeKay ; because I can see 

 no sufiicient cause for distinguishing this fish from the Greatest Lake 

 Trout, or Mackinaw Salmon, with which it appears to mo to be iden- 

 tical, except in size ; whereas size alone is a very insufficient cause of 

 separation. Secondly, the Sebago Lake Trout, which is to be found, 

 as a distinct variety, in no work on American Icthyology ; and yet I 

 have thought it best to insert it, on the authority of several distin- 

 guished sportsmen, who have had frequent opportunities of comparing 

 it with the ordinary Lake Trout, and who pronounce it to be a new 

 and nondescript fish, unless it be the True Salmon degenerated. This 

 last hypothesis I am unwilling to listen to, as I disbelieve in the dege- 

 neration of animals, in peculiar localities, unless confined under unna- 

 tural circumstances, as a sea-running fish in fresh-water, without means 



* This fish I luivo never seen ; but I greatly doubt that the fish called " Trout," 

 hi the South, is identical with the Northern Weak-Fisli. From Professor Agassiz, 

 I understand it to be a peculiar variety of the Weak-Fish, Ololilhiis-, beinjr spotted 

 rather than striped, and thus difreriii<r somewhat from it, and frequenting' fresh 

 streams, which the others do not. 



t With regard to the varieties of Lalse Trout, of which tliere are certainly three 

 entirely distinct, the Ami'tlnjslus-, the Siskawilz, and the Coiifuiix, it is again much 

 to bo regretted that no distinjrnisiiin^; naines have U'cn jriven, all passing iiuliscri- 

 minately under the general term of Lake Trout. 



