56 FISHING WITH THE FLY. 



access to the estuary food of the eggs of different fishes, 

 the young herring/' etc. 



These descriptions differ but little, and are, I believe, 

 as accurate in the main as can be given. Both these 

 writers, as will be seen, are discussing, and have taken 

 opposite sides upon the question, whether the Canadian 

 sea-trout is an anadromous brook-trout. This question 

 was very well presented by Mr. Macdonough (my com- 

 panion) in an article entitled " Sea-Trout Fishing," 

 published in Scribnefs Monthly Magazine for May, 

 1877. He begins thus: "What is a sea-trout? A 

 problem to begin with, though quite a minor one, since 

 naturalists have for some time past kept specimens 

 waiting their leisure to decide whether he is a cadet of 

 the noble salmon race, or merely the chief of the fa- 

 miliar brook-trout tribe. Science inclines to the former 

 view upon certain slight but sure indications noted in 

 spines and gill covers. The witness of guides and gaf- 

 fers leads the same way ; and the Indians all say that 

 the habits of the sea-trout and brook-trout differ, and 

 that the contrast between the markings of the two 

 kinds of fish taken from the same pool, forbids the idea 

 of their identity. Yet the testimony of many accom- 

 plished sportsmen affirms it. The gradual change of 

 color in the same fish as he ascends the stream from 

 plain silvery gray to deepest dotted bronze ; his haunts 

 at the lower end of pools, behind rocks, and among 

 roots ; his action in taking the fly with an upward leap, 

 not downwards from above — all these resemblances 



