1893. ] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 145 
angler ina day, but it is never caught except in one particular 
locality. It spawns in the lake on a fine gravel beach, in three 
feet of water, and does not enter the inlets. Nothing but smelts 
are ever found in its stomach. Flood’s Pond contains neither 
perch nor bass. 
Since, then, by reason of dams on the outlets, no fishes of 
marine ancestry could, within the last fifty years, have gained 
access either to Dan Hole or Flood’s Pond without artificial 
help, since land-locked salmon only have been planted in these 
ponds, and that quite recently; and since there seems to be 
trustworthy evidence of the existence of this so-called silver 
trout in each body of water for at least half a century, it is fair 
to conclude that the Salvelinus Alpinus Aureolus is a native of 
two Maine drainage basins, and, therefore, is aboriginal to New 
England, an American representative of the European saibling, 
red charr, or ombre chevalier. 
But this does not prove its aboriginality to Sunapee Lake, 
New Hampshire, although, all circumstances considered, 
it renders such aboriginality highly probable, inasmuch as no 
data exist to establish a plant of this variety at any time in 
Sunapee Lake, and no German saibling eggs were brought to 
New Hampshire before January, 1881. The fact that the fry 
from the eggs sent to Plymouth in that year were placed in 
Newfound Lake, a body of water apparently in every way 
adapted to the nature of the saibling, but have never been 
heard from, is further significant here. It may prove that the 
foreign fish cannot find the necessary conditions in the New 
Hampshire lakes. The failure of the farmers at Sunapee to 
distinguish between the large brook trout and the saibling (if 
the latter fish was a native) is in contrast with the positive 
knowledge of a difference at Dan Hole and Flood’s Ponds. Its 
explanation may be sought in the habits of the Sunapee saibling 
as already described ; or in the ignorance of the few who in old 
times may ever have seen it, and who cared for nothing beyond 
the fact that it was good to eat. 
Ford’s Pond in Warren, and Silver Lake in Madison, New 
Hampshire, are associated with traditions of the fall spearing 
on their spawning beds of large high-colored trout, which are 
believed, from reports as to their habits and appearance, to 
have belonged to this same species. These two ponds, then, may 
represent a traditional habitat. The waters of Silver Lake 
find their way into the Saco; I was unable to learn whether 
Ford’s Pond discharges into the Connecticut, or through Baker’s 
River into the Merrimac. 
Transactions N. Y. Acad. Sci, Yol. XII. May 18, 1893. 
