86 AMERICAN GAME FISHES. 



specimens he recognized at once with great dehght, as he 

 had been entertaining his incredulous companions with stories 

 of the fighting powers of the httle Salmon of Lake St. John. 

 The other men, natives of the coast, old Salmon fishermen, 

 able to tell at sight fish from different rivers, were puzzled at 

 the difference in color and general appearance of the fish, but 

 never questioned its being a small Salmon. The external 

 difference between it and the Grilse, a large run of which we 

 were then having, was equally noticeable. 



In the Upper Saguenay there is nothing whatever to pre- 

 vent the descent of the fish to the sea; the way is direct, broad, 

 and easy, as compared with some Salmon rivers. There is 

 a tremendous rush of water in the rapids, but the strongest of 

 them all, the Grande Chute, is the one by which the fish 

 descend from Lake St. John. As a matter of fact, large 

 numbers of Wananishe are to be seen in the brackish water of 

 the tide-way at Chicoutimi every spring at the time of the 

 heavy freshets, and may be caught at the head of the tide just 

 below the first rapids from that time till the ice sets in; stray 

 ones are found in the Salmon streams tributary to the Lower 

 Saguenay, in the salt water at Tadoussac, and a couple were 

 taken in the St. Lawrence just above the Saguenay. 



Whether these Saguenay fish reascend from the tide-way is 

 as yet undetermined. In 1883 and 1885 I marked several 

 hundred, but have never heard of them again. The modes 

 adopted — cutting a hole with a punch in the dorsal fin, and 

 snipping off a portion of the adipose fin — are unreliable, for 

 the fins of fish grow like one's finger-nails, and lacerations 

 soon heal, but they were the only means available at the 

 time. A systematic series of experiments by marking fish 

 with numbered tags of platinum, attached to the dorsal fin by 

 platinum wire, is much to be desired. The recapture of a 

 very few fish thus identifiable would probably solve the whole 

 problem of their movements, and shed much light on the 

 questions as to the origin and permanency of the species. 



