86 



nice ones, weighing probably about six or eight ounces each, 

 and upon dressing them and examining the stomachs as usual, 

 judge of my surprise upon finding one of them full of oats ; 

 there were eight kernels stored away in first-class style, and my 

 first question was, where in the name of the Prophet could they 

 have come from, for I knew that there wasn't a spear of grain 

 growing within a dozen miles of this pool and the condition the 

 grain was in showed that they could have been in the stomach 

 but a short time. I finally solved the mystery by remembering 

 that the man who brought us out — we arrived about noon — fed 

 his horses some oats at a point just above the pool, and the 

 grain was either blown into the water or carelessly thrown in by 

 some one. I frequently found in their stomachs portions of 

 the leaves and seeds of the water plants growing in the streams. 

 Among the latter was in several instances a round seed about 

 as large as a No. 4 shot, which I at first thought was a moUusk, 

 a species of spherium, but on examining it with a glass what 

 appeared to the naked eye to be the striations of the shell 

 proved to be the veination of the seed. It may be urged 

 against the vegetarian theory that many fish take that which in 

 no way resembles their ordinary food, as the artificial fly and the 

 different varieties of spoon and spinning baits, and that this 

 particular fish could in no way have had any previous knowledge 

 of oats as food, and consequently the taking of it must be in 

 the nature of a freak rather than a habit, but I do not remember 

 to have ever found in the stomachs of other fish any substance 

 other than their food but which could be accounted for as 

 accidental, while in the grayling the presence of vegetable 

 matter in some forms is of so frequent an occurrence as to 

 point strongly to the fact, that a part of their food at least is 

 vegetable. 



Another point in favor of this theory is the peculiar flavor 

 of the fish and that which has given it its specific name. It is 

 a well-known fact that the flesh of all animals is to a greater or 

 less degree flavored by its food. Now, if this fish fed upon 

 exactly the same materials as the brook trout, could there be a 

 reasonable doubt but what its flesh would taste like that of the 

 trout, while the fact is, that it is distinctly different. 



