Notes and Quertes 
It was their stout, bass-like shape which made 
the puzzling difference. 
Doubtless all these fish are of the same 
species, but can they not be called different 
varieties? Would the Long Island trout, if 
put into the Beaverkill, retain their peculiar 
shape, or would the Beaverkill trout, put into 
the lakes, become assimilated in shape and 
color to the natives of the lakes? L.S. D. 
Where a function of the body is involuntary, 
such as those which promote or retard the 
growth or physical development, the factors 
are, primarily, character and quantity of food 
and conditions of environment, particularly in 
the case of fishes, the adaptibility of the water 
in which they live toa healthy and vigorous 
life, or uvéce versa. No animal exists that 
adapts itself to the condition of a new habitat 
with less apparent effort or disturbance of its 
organic functions than a fish. This is partic- 
ularly the case with fresh-water species, as 
the marine forms seem to be more sensitive to 
changes of temperature, and are said to suffer 
in transportation from one climate to another, 
although the transfer of the Eastern salt-water 
striped bass across the continent to the Pacific 
slope was attended with small loss of the fish 
and the most extraordinary success, as shown 
in their rapid increase in size and numbers in 
their new habitat. 
The queries of our correspondent open up a 
subject of much interest, particularly to us, for, 
as these lines are written, we are on an outing 
in Sullivan county, N. Y., where trout talk 
thickens the atmosphere and leavens all other 
things of iife. Hundreds of the trout of 
Willowemoc stream have passed our examina- 
tion during these summer months, and they 
are not in appearance, at least, the trout of 
last year or the year before. They are, as a 
rule, darker in color and in many instances 
pot-bellied to deformity, especially those 
caught in the upper and narrower reaches of 
thestream. This transformation has evidently 
been caused by the increase of supply of their 
daily food, and the grasshopper is the pzece de 
resistance thereof. The extremely dry sum- 
mer has been favorable for hatching the eggs 
of this insect, and wherever a twig or bush ex- 
ists along the water banks, hundreds of them 
are disturbed by the passing angler or the 
vagabond-feeding cattle of this region. They 
fall in the water, and the fish feed and fatten 
on them like hogs in a pen. This condition 
not only renders them indifferent to the fly- 
fisherman’s feathered lures; it causes them to 
hug the pools where their food is constantly 
261 
falling, and to shun the shallows and rapids, 
where in former seasons and ina higher stage 
of water they foraged, perforce, for a living, 
and kept intact and vigorous their clipper- 
built forms, so strongly in contrast with their 
aldermanic proportions of the present year. 
Here we have before us a striking instance of 
the effect which plenteous and healthful food 
has upon the shape and development of the 
body of the fish. The grasshopper does the 
work, for in some long stretches of water with 
stony and shrubless banks, fox/zna/zs, if he 
lingers there at all, will be found of normal 
form and vigilantly active in the pursuit of 
food, coming at the feathers with a vim born 
of marauding habits. 
A similar stoutness of body occurs in the 
trout of the mill dams or ponds, wherever food 
of a crustaceous character is found on the 
bottom. Plenty of crayfish food fattens them 
until they become almost as broad at the 
shoulders as a black bass, as stated by our 
correspondent of Long Island trout. We 
caught trout in the Oneida Club waters near 
Booneville, N. Y., out of the deep water of the 
dam, which were almost identical with the stout 
fish he describes, and a few rods above the 
head of the same dam we took trout that were 
long and slender like the Beaverkill trout we 
caught a few years ago. 
Of course, our correspondent is aware that 
coloration is not considered in classification of 
species, for it changes as conditions of the 
water and atmosphere change, and bearing 
this fact in mind, we are inclined to reply in 
the negative to his first query, or to be more 
exact, we believe that his bulky Long Island 
trout, when put in the Beaverkill stream, would 
become, and rapidly, Beaverkill trout in form 
and feeding habits, and that the last named 
fish would grow stout under the food condi- 
tions of the Long Island ponds. We should 
bear in mind, however, that heredity or that 
physical idiosyncrasy which we often observe 
in animals, under which a gaunt horse or bony 
man will not take on flesh or fat, is also ob- 
served as prevailing among fishes. Take five 
thousand trout fry, place them in a hatchery, 
pen or pond, immediately after the umbilical 
sack has been absorbed or disappears, give 
them all the same food and care, and in a 
month or so you will see some of them growing 
faster, some stouter than others, more active 
and combative; indeed, so vigorous and canni- 
balistic are some of them, that (so Seth Green 
