142 Fish Stories 



sea if they can, and into little streams to spawn, their eggs 

 ripening in the spring or summer. There is not much dif- 

 ference between males and females. The old males have 

 the jaws lengthened a little, but never hooked, as in the 

 Pacific salmon. The same fish may spawn a number of 

 times, while with the Pacific salmon, a fish spawns but once, 

 dying in a week or so after casting the eggs or the milt. 



In Europe the name trout is given only to the black- 

 spotted forms, which, together with the Atlantic salmon, 

 Salmo salar, constitute the genus Sal mo. 



To the very fine-scaled, red-spotted forms of the cold 

 streams and Alpine lakes, constituting the genus Salvelinus, 

 the people of England have always given the name of char. 

 The char of Europe, known in Germany as " Sailbling," or 

 Salbling, and in France as *' ombre chevalier," is in science 

 Salvelinus alpinus. 



Closely related to this char of Europe are two or three 

 species found in Canada and the Northeast. The Eastern 

 " brook trout," or " speckled trout," the trout of our fathers 

 and grandfathers, is a char, Salvelinus fontinalis. There 

 is no higher praise to be given to any trout-like fish than to 

 say that it is a char. In strict truth, there is no trout to be 

 found in the United States or Canada, east of the great 

 plains, except where the rainbow trout or the brown trout 

 of Europe, or some other of their kind, has been planted. 



The brook trout is found in all clear streams from Labra- 

 dor to upper Georgia. It runs freely into the sea in Can- 

 ada, losing its spots and becoming the sea trout of the lower 

 St. Lawrence. 



The Pacific slope has one char, the malma, or Dolly 

 Varden, known in science as Salvelimis malma. In 1878, 

 when the present writer first tried to classify these Western 

 trout, a specimen of this malma was sent in from the Upper 

 Soda Springs, on the Sacramento River, near the foot of 

 Mount Shasta. The landlady at the Soda Springs said of 

 it: " Why, that is a regular Dolly Varden! " So Professor 



