FISHES OF THE CONNECTICUT LAKES. 



57 



Tlie above description is from a speut male 5.25 inches long from Massabesic 

 Lake, New Hampshire, April, 1904. The identity of these smelts with the 

 marine form is a question which must remain unsettled until a large series 

 from many localities is studied; they are all provisionally called Osmerus 

 mordax. And because there is so much variation in fresh-water smelts, es- 

 pecially in those from different localities, due chiefly to size, and also because 

 it is likely that smelt, if existing at all in the Connecticut Lakes, are small, we 

 give a description of a smaller individual, a spent male 4.37 inches long, se- 

 lected from a lot collected in April, 1904, in Sunapee Lake, by Hon. Nathaniel 

 Wentworth, chairman of New Hampshire Fish and Game Commission. The 

 smelt was introduced into Sunapee Lake from Lake Winnepesaukee. 



Head 5 in length without caudal ; depth 8.09 ; eye 4.20 in head ; snout 4.20 ; 

 maxillary bone 2.62 ; dorsal 9 ; anal 14 ; scales 61-9. Head pointed ; mouth 

 large, with fine sharp teeth ; lower jaw projecting ; mandible 1.75 in head ; 

 distance from tip of snout to posterior extremity of maxillary 2.1 in head ; 

 gillrakers very slender, 12+22 on right side, and 12+23 on left, longest 1.42 in 

 eye; body very slender; dorsal high, first rays longest, much longer than the 

 base and much overlapping tips of last rays when depressed, 1.4 in head, base 

 2.62; pectoral long and pointed; caudal deeply forked, lower lobe the longer. 



Fig. 5. — Smelt. 



Top of head and back greenish, thickly punctulated with black, mostly on 

 edges of scales; silvery on side below axis of body, with few black dots on 

 edges of scales; ventral region plain white; dorsal transparent, finely dotted 

 with black; caudal dusky from the many black dots; few dots on side of head, 

 mandible, and throat; pectoral and veutrals pale, with few black dots on outer 

 rays; anal pale with one black dot at base of each ray, a corresponding row on 

 body at base of fin. 



Distinguished from all other species of this region except those of the salmon 

 family by the adipose fin ; from all trouts, salmon and the laker, by the plainer 

 coloration, and from the somewhat similarly colored " billflsh " (and other 

 whiteflshes) by the large mouth and sharp teeth. 



The smelt is universally known by this name and a few others. 

 In Lake Champlain it is called the " icefish." Its salt-water range 

 is from New Jersey north at least to the St. Lawrence River. The 

 fresh-water smelt is thought to be the same species as the marine 

 form, residing permanently, or landlocked, in fresh water. It occurs 

 naturally in many coastwise lakes of Maine and New Hampshire and 

 in lakes Champlain and Memphremagog but not in the Connecticut 

 Lakes. It has been successfully introduced, however, into these and 



