SALMONID^. 107 



twonty pounds, with which the dimensions of the same fish as described 

 by La Hontan, in his Mem. de PAnieriqm, would seem to agree — " Les 

 plus g}-osses Truites,''^ says he, " des lacs out cinq pieds et demi de lon- 

 gueur et nn pied de diametre'''' — but at the present day, specimens of 

 this gigantic magnitude are never seen, and seventy pounds may be 

 taken as the limit of their ordinary growth. Even this, however, is a 

 size to which the Sea Salmon has scarcely been known to attain. 



It is a bold, powerful and tyrannical fish, with which no other in- 

 habiting the same waters can compete. The Gray Sucking Carp, Ca- 

 tastomus Hudsonius, the Methy, a species of fresh-water Ling, Lota 

 Maculosa, and the Herring-salmon, Coregonus Artedi, form the 

 favorite food of this voracious fish, the stomach of which is constantly 

 found crammed with them almost to repletion ; but he will bite raven- 

 ously and fiercely at almost anything, from a small fish or a piece of 

 pork, to a red rag or a bit of bright of tin, made to play rapidly through 

 the water. 



In form, he considerably resembles the common Salmon, though he 

 is perhaps rather deeper in proportion to his length. His head is neat, 

 small, and well-formed, with rather a peculiar depression above the 

 eye, and the snout sharply curved and beak-like. The head forms 

 nearly a fourth-part of the whole length of the fish ; the skull is more 

 bony than that of the common Salmon, the snout not cartilaginous, 

 but formed of solid bone ; the jaws are very strong, the upper over- 

 lapping by about half an inch the lower, which is strongly articulated 

 to the preoperculum and to the jugal bone. The eye is midway 

 between the snout and the nape, and twice as far from the hinder edge 

 of the gill-cover as from the tip of the snout. 



Of the giU-covers, the preoperculum is curved and vertical, or 

 nearly so ; the suboperculum is deeper than in the other Trouts, and 

 is jointed at its inner angle to the operculum and preoperculum by a 

 slender pi'ocess concealed by these bones. Its edge forms fullv one 

 half of the border of the free gill-cover, and is finely grooved. The 

 gill-rays are twelve in number. 



The dental system of the ^lackinaw Salmon is very complete, and 

 more formidable than in any other member of the f\xmily. The inter- 

 maxillaries and labials, as well as the palatine bones, lower jaws and 

 tongue, are armed with very sharp and .strong conical curved teeth ; 



