THE LAKE OF STENNIS. 5> 



one group on the northern promontory, the other on the 



south, — 



'* Old even beyond tradition's bfeath." 



The shores of both the upper and lower divisions of the 

 lake were strewed, at the time I passed, by a line of wrack, 

 consisting, for the first few miles from where the lower loch 

 opens to the sea^ of only marine plants, then of marine plants 

 mixed with those of fresh-water growth, and then, in the 

 upper sheet of water, of lacustrine plants exclusively. And 

 the fauna of the loch is, I was informed, of as mixed a cha- 

 racter as its flora, — the marine and fresh- water animals hav- 

 ing each their own reaches, with certain debateable tracts 

 between, in which each kind expatiates with more or less 

 freedom, according to its specific nature and constitution, — 

 some of the sea-fish advancing far on the fresh water, and 

 others, among the proper denizens of the lake, encroaching 

 far on the salt. The common fresh-water eel strikes out, I 

 was told, farthest into the sea-water ; in which, indeed, re- 

 versing the habits of the salmon, it is known in various places 

 to deposit its spawn. It seeks, too, impatient of a low tem- 

 perature, to escape from the cold of winter, by taking refuge 

 in water brackish enough, in a climate such as ours, to resist • 



the influence of frost. Of the marine fish, on the other hand, 

 I found that the flounder got greatly higher than any of the 

 others, inhabiting reaches of the lake almost entirely fresh. 

 I have had an opportunity elsewhere of observing a curious ij 



change which fresh water induces in this fish. In the brack- ' 



ish water of an estuary, the animal becomes, without dimi- 

 nishing in general size, thicker and more fleshy than when in 

 its legitimate habitat, the sea ; but the flesh loses in quality 

 what it gains in quantity ; — it grows flabby and insipid, and 

 the margin-fins lack always their strip of transparent fat. But 

 the change induced in the two floras of the lake, — marine 

 &nd ^acuxtrine, — is consid'r*"^bly more palpable and obvious 



