13 



in ? 'laria at the central station. Tliese beautiful fish had 

 juSl arrived from the United States ponds at Wytheville, Vir- 

 ginia, where their origin and relations were unknown. We 

 do not know to this day how the cross was produced and in 

 what establishment, but it is believed the fertilized eggs were 

 obtained from Northville, Michigan, and that the fish, of 

 which a few still remain alive at Wytheville, are the progeny 

 of the female rainbow and the male brook trout. I have pre- 

 viously intimated in The Angler of November lo my inability 

 to prove the assumption as to the nature of the hybrid which 

 I am about to describe, but there is no doubt in my mind that 

 the theory here adopted is justified by what we know of 

 hybrids in general. In form and to some extent in coloration 

 the fish represented in the following illustration resembles 

 the brook trout. In the character of the teeth and the size of 

 the scales the resemblance to the rainbow trout is very strik- 

 ing. Two noteworthy features are, the absence of red spots 

 and the presence of whitish vermiculations on the sides. 

 None of the fins are mottled except the large fin on the back. 

 It will be remembered that the brook trout has dark bands 

 and irregular blotches, or mottlings, on the tail. The rainbow 

 has black spots on the body, the tail and the back fins, and 

 many adults have a broad band of crimson along the middle 

 line. 



The hybrid is ten and a half inches long, or about two and 

 a half times the length of the illustration. The line shown 

 under the tail represents one inch of the length of the fish ; 

 the same system of indicating length is applied in the plates 

 of the " Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United 

 States." The scales are as large as in the rainbow, number- 

 ing 135 rows from the head to the tail. The row of teeth in 

 the middle of the roof of the mouth is double in the first half 

 of its length and single posteriorly ; it is longer than in the 

 brook trout and shorter than in the rainbow. There are four 

 pairs of teeth on the tongue ; the root of the tongue (hyoid 

 bone) is toothless. The large back fin has ten split rays and 



