266 American Fisheries Society 



nomial or trinomial designation, for all practical purposes, it 

 would seem to me, they should be regarded and treated as 

 distinct species. 



Discussion 



Mr. J. W. TiTCX>MB, Albany, N. Y. : This is a very important 

 paper. In the matter of blue pike and yellow pike, a curious situation 

 prevails on the Great Lakes, affecting Ohio as well as New York and 

 Pennsylvania. In these districts the law protects the yellow pike under 

 a certain size, but it does not protect the blue pike. I was hoping it 

 would be settled definitely whether they were two distinct species or 

 not. But it is a fact that young blue pike, or blue pike in a spawning 

 condition, are allowed to be taken in the Great Lakes, while the yellow 

 pike is protected. 



Dr. Kendall: The name does not amount to anything. A taxo- 

 nomical species is one thing, and a natural form another. Taxonomi- 

 cally, we are considering these fish as we find them on a horizontal 

 plane. In this case it seems to me that we should take into considera- 

 tion more than their relation to each other on this horizontal plane. 

 The fact is that you have a divergence, and whether you call it a species, 

 or a subspecies, or a variety, or what not, does not affect the situation 

 at all. You have two things that are recognized by the fisherman and 

 by the markets and by everybody as two distinct forms, and for all 

 practical purposes they are as distinct as though taxonomically so re- 

 garded, and it does not matter what you call them. 



Dr. R. C. Osburn, Columbus, Ohio: Mr. President, in the first 

 place I want to express my admiration for Dr. Kendall's nerve in tack- 

 ling these two very much mooted questions as to the relationship between 

 the rainbow trout and the steelhead trout, and the blue and yellow pikes. 

 I desire also to commend him for the admirable scientific way in which 

 he has undertaken to solve these problems by such careful and minute 

 study. It is the only way in which such questions can be handled if we 

 are ever to arrive at a solution of the problems involved. It seems to 

 me that these forms may be still very closely related; they may be 

 physiologically different species, but, perhaps, have not diverged suffi- 

 ciently so that we can separate them satisfactorily by structural char- 

 acteristics, and that as the ages progress, such data as Dr. Kendall has 

 worked out will enable the William C. Kendalls of a few thousand 

 years hence to make comparisons with the figures of the present day 

 and to say whether the divergence is growing wider as the ages go on. 

 I do think that such studies as these have a biological importance in 

 addition to any practical value they may have in connection with the 

 fisheries. 



Dr. E. E. Prince, Ottawa, Canada: I agree with Dr. Osburn that 

 these two studies are really among the most beneficial contributions to 



