FISHES AND FISHING IN SUNAPEE LAKE. 45 



stock the lake. It is a profusely black-spotted lish, and could be 

 confused wdth no other salmonoid in the lake, unless ])ossibly the 

 cliinook and landlocked salmon. From the former it may be dis- 

 tinguished by the fewer anal rays and from the latter by the finer or 

 larger number of scales in the lateral longitudinal series, the land- 

 locked salmon having not over 120, usuall}^ 115, all told, and the 

 rainbow having 145, more or less. It is a delightfully gamy fish 

 as a rule, and readily takes the artificial fly. It usually makes a 

 long hard fight. 



Considering the comparative harmlessness of the rainbow trout 

 compared with the chinook and landlocked salmon, it seems a pity 

 that the waters of Sunapee are not more favorable to it and have not 

 received more plants, if it seems necessary to stock it with non- 

 hidigenous fishes. 



Brown Trout {SalmoJ'ario). 



The fish better known in this country as brown trout was first 

 introduced under the name of Von Behr trout, after the man through 

 whose instrumentality the eggs were obtained from Germany. It 

 was later called German brown trout and finally just brown trout. 

 In Great Britain it is known as brook trout, burn trout, and brown 

 trout, also having many otlier names for local variations. In 

 Germany it is the Bach-forellc (brook trout), but it is not exclusively 

 a brook trout any more than the eastern brook trout of the United 

 States {Salvelinus fontinalis) is such. It also inhabits lakes, in 

 some of which it reaches a large size, even 50 pounds, if the British 

 Salmo ferox is the same species. Day, in his "British and Irish 

 Salmonidfe," 1887, gives the habitat of this trout as the colder and 

 temperate portions of the Northern Hemisphere, descending in Asia 

 as far south as the Hindu Kush, but not normally present in any 

 portion of Hindustan. 



It has been introduced into many United States waters, in some of 

 which it has thrived. It is a good game fish, but Henshall says it 

 is not as gamy in this country as the eastern trout (S. fontinalis). 

 It will endure warmer water than S. fontinalis and may be suited 

 to depleted trout streams which, owing to change of conditions, are 

 unsuited to the brook trout. 



Day says: 



The food which trout consume is of various descriptions. One of about 1^ pounds 

 weight, taken in June, 1882, in tlie Tweed, was found to contain 11 small trout and 

 1 minnow. They do not object to little fish, as the minnow, loach, sticklebacks, etc, 

 water rats, young birds, frogs, snails, slugs, worms, leeches, maggots, flies, beetles, 

 moths, water spiders, and even a lizard (Field, October, 1885). They will swallow one 

 of their own kind two-thirds as large as themselves. In Mr. Buckland's museum wa.s 

 an example, the stomach of which was distended by 2,470 eggs of apparently the salmon . 



