26 THE GAME FISH OF NORTH AMERICA. 



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 discovered in the inferiority of their flesh, both 

 in color and firmness of muscle, and in their comparatively lazy gait, 

 and want of game qualities, vigor and endurance. 



Of other soft-finned fishes, the Smelt, Osmerus Viridescens, the Shad, 

 Alosa Prastabilis, and the Herring, Clupea Harengus, are migratory 

 from salt to fresh-water, and so perhaps is the Weak-Fish, in the 

 Southern waters, there misnamed Trout,* Otolithus Carolinensis. 



The White-Fish, Cor eg onus Albus, and the Otsego Bass, Coregonus 

 Otsego, are partially migratory from the deeper waters of the lakes 

 which they inhabit. All the Stturida, Cyprinidce, and Esoddce, are 

 stationary fish. 



Three or four of the above species and varieties I have admitted 

 with no small doubt ; and first of these, in the family Salmonida, the 

 Common Lake Trout,| Salmo Confinis, of DeKay ; because I can see 

 no sufficient cause for distinguishing this fish from the Greatest Lake 

 Trout, or Mackinaw Salmon, with which it appears to me to be iden- 

 tical, except in size ; whereas size alone is a very insufficient cause of 

 separation. Secondly, the Sebago Lake Trout, which is to be found, 

 as a distinct variety, in no work on American Icthyology ; and yet I 

 have thought it best to insert it, on the authority of several distin- 

 guished sportsmen, who have had frequent opportunities of comparing 

 it with the ordinary Lake Trout, and who pronounce it to be a new 

 and nondescript fish, unless it be the True Salmon degenerated. This 

 last hypothesis I am unwilling to listen to, as I disbelieve in the dege- 

 neration of animals, in peculiar localities, unless confined under unna- 

 tural circumstances, as a sea-running fish in fresh-water, without means 



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

 in the South, is identical with the Northern Weak-Fish. From 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 fresh 

 streams, which the others do not. 



* NOTE TO REVISED EDITION. With regard to this fish, I am satisfied that it is 

 distinct from Amethystus, though closely allied to it. It is a deeper and shorter 

 fish. See Supplement. 



