356 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



conical and inflected teeth. Those upon the lower maxillaries are large 

 and strong ; those of the intermaxillaries are next in size ; upon maxil- 

 lary and palatines next in size, and those upon* the vomer smallest, 

 numbering only three or four, and not confined to the anterior extremity, 

 but extending a good way backward. The tongue is deeply grooved, 

 and lurnished with inflected teeth, arranged in lateral rows. 



The opercular apparatus is somewhat concealed by the thick skin 

 which envelopes it, but the outer lines of the operculum are quite dis- 

 tinctly marked. The operculum is quadrilateral, of greater height 

 than breadth, well rounded in its posterior free margin, denticulated in 

 its lower, and nearly square in its upper, the anterior angle of which is 

 characterized by a strong and prominent process. Suboperculum is 

 nearly one-third smaller than the operculum, is triangular in its upper 

 portions, elliptical in its lower borders, and terminates at its articula- 

 tion in the form of a fish-hook. The interoperculum has, as usual, the 

 form of a long square, but square on the posterior side, and forming an 

 acute angle with its lower margin, slightly rounded on the anterior side. 

 Finally, the preoperculum is long, slender, crescentic, and almost verti- 

 cal in its position ; it is thick and furnished with a prominent ridge and 

 three foramina upon its anterior surface. 



This trout inhabits many of the great lakes and deep mountain-tarns 

 of Maine and New Brunswick ; but it is believed not to exist in those of 

 Eastern New Brunswick, which singular hiatus in its distribution per- 

 haps may be explained by the absence of deep waters in that country. It 

 haunts the deepest waters, where the cold, or the repose to which it leads, 

 favors that development and conservation of fat which is, indeed, a char- 

 acteristic, and it steals forth in quiet at the approach of twilight or at 

 early morn to the shoals and the shores in quest of its prey, which con- 

 sists for the most part of the Lota and Cyprinidw ; but its baffled voracity 

 often contents itself with substances entirely foreign, as its stomach 

 presents sometimes a heterogeneous mass of bones, leaves, twigs, and 

 fragments of decayed wood. 



Its habits vary in some localities. In certain lakes they are bold, 

 and, ranging near the 'surface, at times may be taken by trolling, but 

 never rising to the fly, while in other lakes they are timid, and seek the 

 obscurest recesses ; thus, for instance, their existence in the Tunk Lakes 

 was unknown for more than half a century to the inhabitants living 

 near their shores. 



Its mysterious nature has furnished the all-observing Indian with some 

 proper idioms, and it appears again in the vague mythology and wild 

 legends of that almost extinct race. Its names are various among the 

 dififerent tribes; and if the present are not of the half-breed Canadian 

 date, they are, perhaps, of recent origin, since the few remaining dialects 

 have changed greatly within a century past. Considering, then, the 

 uncertainty of its ancient name, and the diversity of its synonym, I pro- 

 pose my friend Toma of the Openangos. 



