22 AMERICAN GAME FISHES. 



Scales comparatively large, rather largest posteriorly, silvery, 

 and well-imbricated in the young, becoming imbedded in adult 

 males. Coloration in the adult brownish above, the sides more 

 or less silvery, with numerous black spots on sides of head, 

 on body and on fins, and red patches along the sides in the 

 males; young specimens (parrs) with about eleven dusky 

 cross-bars, besides black spots and red patches, the color, as 

 well as the form of the head and body, varying much with 

 age, food, and condition; the black spots in the adult often 

 x-shaped, or xx-shaped. Head 4; depth 4; Br. 11; D. 11; 

 A. 9; scales 23-120 21 ; vertebras 60; pyloric coeca about 

 65. Weight 15-40 pounds. North Atlantic, ascending all 

 suitable rivers, and the region north of Cape Cod; some- 

 times permanently land locked in lakes, where its habits and 

 coloration (but no tangible specific characters) change some- 

 what, when it becomes, in America, var. Sebago. 



The natural southern limit of the Atlantic Salmon, within 

 historical time, was unquestionably the Hudson River. It 

 was so when Hendrik Hudson discovered it, but subsequent 

 geological changes must have occurred in its upper tributa- 

 ries to bar the passage to suitable spawning-grounds. Its 

 extreme northern limit has not been traced, but it has been 

 found in a dozen of the rivers which empty into the Arctic 

 Ocean, and its range from the Atlantic to the Pacific has 

 been fully established. It is abundant along the entire Lab- 

 rador coast, and up around Cape Chidley, its extreme north- 

 ern mount, in about latitude 62 degrees, and thence around the 

 Koksok, Georges River, Whale River, and other rivers of the 

 great Ungava Bay, on the north coast of Labrador, and 

 thence to the western entrance of Hudson Strait, seems to be 

 its limit in that direction. 



The Arctic habitat of the Pacific Salmon begins about 

 Wager Inlet, and the Melville Peninsula, and continues west- 

 ward indefinitely. Between the Hudson Strait and Wager 

 Inlet, the great Hudson Bay is projected southward in one 

 tremendous indentation, and in its waters no Salmon are 

 found only Sea Trout. The Bay separates the family of 

 Salar from the family Oncorhynchus, of which Chonicha is 



