Kendall. — New England Chars 99 



ish Museum, has decided that the generic name Onco- 

 rhynchus which has been adopted for the Pacific salmon 

 is no longer tenable because he found an individual of a 

 Japanese species, which was supposed to be of the group 

 formerly called Oncorhynchus, having as few anal rays 

 as the genus Salmo. One of the distinguishing marks of 

 the genus had been held to be the more numerous rays 

 in the anal fin than in that of the genus Salmo. How- 

 ever, besides some minor associated or combined differ- 

 ential characters, the Pacific salmon have one prominent 

 characteristic that sets them out as a sharply defined 

 group of fishes, and which, taken in combination with 

 predominant, if not defined, structural characters, I think 

 should be regarded as sufficient to distinguish it as a 

 genus. That characteristic is that the fishes composing 

 this group invariably die soon after having reproduced 

 once only in their life time. 



Reverting to the New England trouts, the four pic- 

 tures following the lake trout are of the blue-back trout 

 (demonstration) . For many years this fish was supposed 

 to be peculiar to the Rangeley lake in western Maine, but 

 was comparatively recently discovered in Rainbow lake, 

 the headwaters of a tributary of the West Branch of the 

 Penobscot river. The first published description of this 

 species was by Girard in 1853, from which time no other 

 species of the saibling group of chars was recognized in 

 New England until about 1885, when the golden trout of 

 Sunapee lake was discovered. A peculiarity of the blue- 

 back was that until comparatively recently they were 

 small fish, never over 9 or 10 inches long and never varied 

 from about one-fifth of a pound each. They were hardly 

 ever taken on a hook but were netted by the inhabitants 

 in large quantities as they ascended the affluents to 

 spawn, appearing in those places about the tenth of Oc- 

 tober. Finally they began to decrease rapidly in num- 

 ber, so rapidly that the Maine Fish Commission consid- 

 ered it necessary to prohibit catching them by any means. 

 The commissioners apparently ascribed the growing scar- 

 city to excessive and untimely fishing. But such fishing 



