368 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 



just at the desired time ; a guide we consulted said we 

 were too soon. It being better to be early than late, we 

 pushed at once for our first halting-place, and the result 

 was that we hit things so nicely that we struck the opening 

 day. For about two or three weeks the take was very 

 great, and the variety of colouring among our prizes some- 

 thing wonderful. A collecting naturalist, a pupil of the 

 celebrated professor of natural history at Yale College, 

 Cambridge, Massachusetts, joined our party a few days 

 after our arrival, and all these various coloured fish were 

 designated by him as Salmo fontinalis. With so great an 

 authority I did not presume to differ; still, when he 

 informed me that the Salmo fontinalis of American waters 

 was identical with our home brook trout, I thought that 

 the lively game little beauty of our mountain streams had 

 wonderfully changed in colour and appearance from his 

 trans- Atlantic brother, or vice versa. As the weather 

 began to get warmer, the more brilliant coloured specimens 

 became scarcer, and ultimately ceased to be taken in the 

 river. This circumstance induced me further to think that 

 there was some difference either in habits or choice of 

 haunts which their more plain-clothed relatives did not 

 affect, and that at least there were different varieties, if not 

 species, among the inhabitants of this stream ; and the 

 more I think the subject over now, the more thoroughly 

 do I feel convinced that the name of Salmo fontinalis has 

 been frequently applied to what is, in reality, our red- 

 bellied char. Memory is often not to be depended upon ; 

 but with the assistance of a few notes (the lapse of time 

 not being more than a few years), I will endeavour to tell 



