THE FAMILY PERCID^. 21 



Genus Centrarchus. 



The Rock Bass {Centrarchus jEneas). 



Genus Otolithus. 



The Weak Fish {Otolithus Regalis). 



The Southern Trout {Otolithus Carolinensis) . 



And with these, unless the reader choose to add the Eel of 

 the class Apodal Malacopterygii, family Anguillid^, the 

 list of the fresh-water Sporting Fishes of the United States and 

 British Provinces may be said to close. 



Of these fish, the True Salmon {Salmo Salar), the Sea Trout 

 {Salmo Trutta Marina), the Brook Trout {Salmo Fontinalis), the 

 Arctic Charr {Salmo Hoodii), and perhaps the Sebago Lake Trout, 

 are migratory, as is also the Arctic Grayling {Thymallus Signifer) ; 

 all the other Lake Trout, and such of the Brook Trout as are 

 found in small streams above impracticable falls, or in spring 

 ponds, or lakes without outlets, are stationary, or non-migratory ; 

 and the consequences of their habit may be very readily disco- 

 vered in the inferiority of their flesh, both in colour and firmness 

 of muscle, and in their comparatively lazy gait, and want of 

 game qualities, vigour and endurance. 



Of other soft-finned fishes, the Smelt {Osmerus Viridescens) , 

 the Shad {Alosa Pnsstabilis) , and the Herring {Clupea Harengas), 

 are migratory from salt to fresh water, and so, perhaps, is the 

 Weak Fish, in the Southern waters, there misnamed Trout* 

 ( Otolithus Carolinensis) . 



* This fish I have never seen ; but I greatly doubt that the fish called " Trout," 

 iu the South, is identical with the Northern Weak Fish. Fi'om Professor Agassiz, 

 I understand it to be a peculiar variety of the Weak Fish (Otolithus), being spotted, 

 rather than striped, and thus differing somewhat from it, and frequenting fi*esh 

 streams, which the others do not. 



