734 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERfES. 



In tliG letter quoted previously from D. H. Fitzhugh it is stated : " 1 

 do not know any tish-culturists who liave grayling except Seth Green 

 and Fred Mather, who obtained them last spring. Mr. Green collected 

 about one hundred eggs ia the Ausable early in May, and informs 

 Die he hatched nearly all at Caledonia, and that the fry are thriving. 

 George H. Jerome, one of our commissioners, had some on exhibition 

 at the Michigan State fair. I do not know how manj' are in his posses- 

 sion." 



Fred Mather, in a letter to Forest and Stream, quotes the statement 

 from a letter from A. S. Collins, in whose hatching-house at Caledonia 

 the grayling eggs were cared for, that " the young fishes were larger at 

 six mouths old than the brook-trout at the same age." 



This is a like fact with that stated by Heckel and Kner with refer- 

 ence to the grayling of Central Europe, that they grew very rapidly, 

 and attained mature size when two j'ears old. 



The average size of the grayling in the Ausable River is not more 

 than ten or eleven inches in length. It rarely attains the length o^' six- 

 teen inches, and the largest recorded weighed less than two pounds ; 

 the average weight is not more than a half-pound. 



The Old World species have attracted attention from a very early 

 period ; the impression that the fish possessed the odor of thyme sug- 

 gesting the nrime of 0o/iaXXoq to the Greeks. * 



LinuiPus called the grayling of Europe and Siberia Salmo thymalus. 

 Artedi placed it as No. 3 of his genus Coregonus. The names Salmo 

 tJiyiHallus and Coregonus thymaUus were applied to all species known until 

 Eichardson described a species froui Northern British America, col- 

 lected by Lieutenant Back during Sir John Franklin's first Arctic jour- 

 ney, as Coregonus signl/er ; stating that the specific name "standard- 

 bearer" applied to the character of the great dorsal fin. At the same 

 time, a supposed second species was described, which he called Corego- 

 nus thy mallo ides, and which, in the Fauna Boreali-Americana, published 

 later, he suggests to be the young of T. slgni/er, and, at the same timcj 

 changes the generic name to ThymaUus. 



After this, additional names were made, supposed to represent species 

 of the Old World, until the list was increased to the number of ten. 

 Nilsson gave the name of ThymaUus vulgaris to a graylingfound in Norway 

 and in Lapland. Agassiz named the grayling of Central Europe ThymaUus 

 vemlUfer; a T. thymaUus froui Denmark was named by Kroyer ; Valen- 

 ciennes gave the names of Thymalus gymnothorax to one from Berlin, 

 Germany; T. gymnogasfer to one from the Neva near St. Petersburg ; 

 T. JEliana to one from Lake Geneva ; T. Pallasii to one from Russia ; 

 T. ontariensis to one supposed to have come from the vicinity of Lake 



* Tlie grayling, in Northern Italy, is still said to have the common name of Temolo. 

 In Germany, it has the name of Aesch, referring to its gray or ash-colored tint, a deri- 

 vation similar to that of its English name grayling, which is said to have been first 

 used by Willnghby, who published a history of fishes in 1686. 



