A THING OF BEAUTY WITHOUT ALLOY. 147 



THE BROOK TROUT. tialinofontinaUs. 



all its fins are soft-rayed except the second dorsal, which is 

 adipose ; its caudal fin, or tail, is nearly straight across the 

 end, contradistinguished from the other families of the genus, 

 including lake trout. Its meat is generally pinky or salmon- 

 colored, and of all the shades between pink and white, the 

 mallow-colored trout is preferred for perfection Qigottt. The 

 meat laminates in flakes, and, when in best condition, there is 

 a curd-like leaf of creamy succulency between each flake. 

 Trout taken in streams which empty into tide-waters are 

 usually in best condition, because their food consists of smelt, 

 spearing, shrimp, herring roe, roes of other fishes and their 

 alevins, in addition to their desserts of flies to render them 

 more delicate, to say nothing of ground bait driven down the 

 stream by freshets, and from which our Beau Brummels of 

 the estuary turn aside their beautiful noses. Streams backed 

 by saline tides are not often impregnated by the debris car- 

 ried down with the floods or by any foreign substance ; hence 

 New Yorkers regard Long Island trout as the best, while Bos- 

 tomans consider the Marshfield trout as the ne phis ultra. 

 Though I accord a preference to trout which have access to 

 tide-waters, those of mountain streams are better than any 

 pond trout. Writers upon angling mention many families 

 of the brook trout ; there are doubtless very many, but in the 

 United States I know of but few. A marked peculiarity is 

 observable in the trout of the Umbagog range of lakes and 





