48 FISHES OF THE VICINITY OF NEW YORK 



usually! X or xx-shapcd and red spots or blotches are usually present, 

 as also in the Brown Trout. The black spots of the Brown Trout may be 

 either circular or x-shaped, some of them with a pale border. The ground 

 color of the body in this species is brownish or brownish black, unlike 

 the gray of the Salmon or Rainbow Trout, and it has thirty-eight to 

 fifty-one instead of sixty to seventy pyloric cseca (sac-like appendages 

 attached to the front of the stomach) . 



The Landlocked Salmon is the land-locked form of the Atlantic 

 Salmon from which it is scarcely differentiable. It is a slightly stockier 

 fish, more heavily spotted. The usual weight of the Atlantic Salmon 

 ranges from fifteen to forty pounds. It rarely reaches fifty pounds. 

 The young of salmon and trout, known as parrs, have black blotches 

 along the side. 



The Smelt is a small more or less translucent fish with silvery sides 

 living in salt water but entering streams to spawn and often becoming 

 landlocked. It has the large mouth, small scales, adipose fin of the 

 trout and salmon to which it is not distantly allied, but is placed in a 

 different family. Smelt enter rivers and brackish bays during the colder 

 months for the purpose of spawning. They are very abundant, taken 

 in large quantities by nets and bj^ hook and line, and are among the 

 choicest of our food fishes. 



The only remaining fish found in this vicinity which has an adipose 

 fin is the Lizard Fish,^ an abundant salt-water species which sometimes 

 occurs in numbers in our waters in summer. It has coarser scales than 





LIZARD FISH 



any of the trouts or salmons, sixty to sixty-four counted from head to 

 tail, a very large mouth with formidable teeth and a forked tail fin. 

 It reaches a length of twelve inches, is cigar-shaped, mottled in color, 

 and lies on sandy bottoms in shallow water, darting swiftly upon small 

 fishes which chance its way. 



lAlthouith superficially trout-like, the Lizard Fish belongs not to the Isospondyli but to a varied 

 mostly deep water group, the Miomi. 



