138 KENDALL: NEW ENGLAND SALMONS. 



Origin of the Lake Salmon. 



Some ichthyologists have regarded this fish as a comparatively segregated sea salmon, 

 Salmo solar. Others have stated their views to the effect that the sea salmon is only a 

 sea-run lake salmon. Rarely is it claimed that they should be regarded as distinct 

 species. Once there were those who thought the lake salmon had become adapted to a 

 permanent fresh-water Ufe by having been imprisoned in fresh water by a mechanical 

 barrier which prevented its egress. 



Day (1887, p. 104, footnote) says that 'Malmgren beUeved that anadromous salmon 

 might have had their descent to the ocean summarily stopped and either themselves or 

 their fry, which latter at least must have been in fresh water, had to select between 

 extinction or continuing their race under altered conditions.' 



Some of these various ideas that have been advanced concerning the landlocking 

 process are more interesting than explanatory. The view that the sea salmon is merely 

 a sea-run race of a fresh-water salmon obviates the necessity of any 'convulsion of 

 nature' to imprison the fish in the lakes, but it does not explain how it has come about 

 that the sea salmon has become so widely distributed, and how it has acquired so many 

 different local hereditary physiological characters, and why it ceased to go into lakes 

 of its alleged origin when it ascended the outlets of those lakes to breed. 



A few of the various views mentioned follow: In 1869, Dr. Hamlin (1874, p. 346) 

 wrote: 'The naturahst will ask the question: "Has not the lake-sahnon appeared since 

 the erection of dams, and being thus confined and prevented egress to the sea, has it not 

 degenerated into the present variety?" 



'The evidence is very conclusive that tliis fish existed from the earliest times in all 

 the lakes where it is found to-day, and long before the advent of the European on our 

 coasts. The Indians speak of it in their early traditions. The term "land-locked" as 

 apphed to it is inappropriate, since the erection of the dams does not prevent the fish 

 from passmg to sea during the spring and winter floods.' 



Yet only three and one-third years after the foregoing was published Dr. Hamlin 

 (1874 p. 353-354) made the following contradictory statement in a letter to Professor 

 Baird, the United States Commissioner of Fisheries in 1872: 'Since I wrote this article, 

 I have satisfied myself that the non-migratory salmon have been seen in the Schoodic, 

 Penobscot, and Union River waters only since forty years. Concernmg the Sebago 

 salmon, I am not so positive, but am quite sure the variety is not one hundred years 

 old, or since the erection of impassible dams on its outlet. The Schoodic salmon are 

 about forty years old, and the old Indian hunters have given me the precise time of 

 their appearance and the disappearance of the migratory salmon, which coincides with 

 the erection of impassable dams. 



'Migratory salmon of large size were at that time speared on the same grounds where 

 the small salmon are now taken in great numbers, and which are never over five pounds 

 in weight.' 



G. Brown Goode (1884, p. 470) expressed a view regarding the fresh-water origin of 

 salmon as follows : 'I am incUned to the view that the natural habitat of the salmon is in 



