98 American Fisheries Society 



The lake trout has been regarded as a distinct genus 

 from the rest of the chars and for a long tame bore the 

 gXic name of Cristivorne, This genus was apparen ly 

 based upon the form of the vomer alone but it has re 

 cently been shown that this ground is untenable. There- 

 fore according to the rules of taxonomy, this genus 

 CHst^Zlr ha's to be abandoned and the fish again faUs 

 into the generic group designated as Sulvehnm How- 

 ever while this character alone does not serve to gen- 

 eric^ distinguish it, there are indications that there 

 may be found some other quite tangible characters or 

 Tven more than tangible-something that we can get hold 

 of and grasp-that will separate it as a distinct genus, 

 regardless of the character of the vomer. As a rule we 

 cannot find one character alone that can be regarded as 

 S generic value. There must be a combination , of char- 

 acteristics and each of these may alone be of little sig- 

 nificance or value but in combination wholly sufficient. 

 ?n regard to the lake trout, one apparently minor char- 

 acterfstic is a permanently strongly forked tail and an- 

 :*er is its general deep water habitat Other chars have 

 forked tails in their younger stages and in some instances 

 he character is retained in later life, but this is irregu- 

 ar and inconstant in those fishes while it is constant in 

 the lake trout. The forked tail alone, however, will not 

 Ivai so it must be associated with other characters 

 which investigation may quite probably reveal, for the 

 7acfthat the" younger stages of other f*f ™ h - 

 forked tails and the lake trout a permanent one suggests 

 that the lake trout originated earlier in the line of ascent 

 or evolu«on than did the other chars from some common 

 fork-tailed ancestry. If this is true the lake trout m«* 

 naturally and necessarily be a distinct genus. However, 

 ft combination of distinctive characters must be demon- 

 strated before the fish can be entitled to resume the title 



of Cristivomer. „„tt»r 



In this connection, I beg to refer to another matter 



which bears upon this question but not directly upon 



the New England chars. Mr. C. Tate Regan, of the Bnt- 



, 



