CHAPTER XVII 
THE CHAR AND THE SMELT 
Sus-cenus SALVELINUS 
REFERENCE has been made above to Dr. Giinther’s arrange- 
ment of the genus Sa/mo in two sub-genera: (1) Salmones, 
or true salmon, distinguished by bearing teeth throughout 
the length of the vomer; and (2) Sa/velini, or chars, bearing 
teeth only on the head or forepart of the vomer. It must 
be owned that this is not a very convincing distinction, seeing 
that the teeth on the vomer of the Sa/mones are not persistent 
through life. As Dr. Giinther himself has explained, these 
vomerine teeth “ at an early age are gradually lost from behind 
towards the front, so that half-grown and old individuals have 
only a few (t—4) left.” Still, the dentition of char is very con- 
stant, and affords a convenient means of distinguishing between 
two groups of the genus Sa/mo, which, although they have much 
in common, differ pretty constantly in habit and appearance. 
But whereas I find the same difficulty in understanding Dr. 
Gunther's motive in subdividing the British char into six 
separate species as presents itself against accepting his treat- 
ment of fresh-water trout, I shall deal with the British char 
as a single species branching into local varieties. Probably 
agreement upon the number of species to be recognised among 
the chars could only be arrived at after careful experiments, 
consisting of rearing quantities of each variety and submitting 
them to uniform physical environment, in order to test whether 
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