i88o3 Utah Fishes 



In Utah I stopped for a time at Provo, the 

 "Garden City," to study the fish fauna of the valley 

 of the Great Salt Lake. This investigation opened 

 new problems, economic and otherwise — one of 

 them a matter of conservation, for thousands of 

 trout entered the irrigation ditches from the Provo 

 and Jordan rivers, only to be scattered high and dry 

 over the meadows of Zion. 



In Provo I received considerable help from Peter a Mormon 

 Madsen, a shrewd but unsophisticated Mormon ^'^^^^ 

 elder of Danish birth, who lived on the shores of 

 Utah Lake, where, with several wives and an over- 

 flowing family of strapping lads, he maintained him- 

 self by fishing. Twenty-five years later, revisiting 

 Provo, I called on Madsen, then a bishop. The old 

 man at once sent for a photographer in order to have 

 a picture of himself and me together, a memorial 

 of former days. 



As a geologist to some degree, I was much in- Lake 

 terested in the enormous post-glacial Lake Bonne- ^o^^^^^^i' 

 ville, of which the Great Salt Lake is the main relic. 

 High above the latter on every side there plainly 

 appear successive terraces, indicating ancient levels 

 which obtained when the inflow from melting glaciers 

 was much greater than that from the present tribu- 

 taries, the Provo, Jordan, Weber, and Bear rivers. 

 In summer time the lake itself is salt to saturation, 

 being thus so heavy that one floats like a cork, 

 and the only trouble is to keep one's head out of 

 the smarting water. Of animal life there is none 

 save the larva of a certain fly and a species of brine 

 shrimp. 



The fish fauna of the tributary streams is approxi- 

 mately that of the Snake River, into which the 



C 231 2 



