APPENDIX. 363 



pace. Scarcely a match at any time in point of speed for this agile 

 young Indian, it was soon overtaken, and he had succeeded in beating 

 it almost to fragments with a stick which he had snatched up in the 

 wild chase when I arrived to see him hauling it out from the thicket 

 in which he had captured it. 



" Hearing his story, I went to the tree, and in it could distinctly 

 see the end of the charger, and feel confident that it may be still 

 seen there if the former is standing. That day we feasted gloriously 

 at dinner-time on the roasted ribs of young bears, one of which had 

 been shot with a halfpenny." 



THE CAPLIN. 



{Mallotus villosus.) 



This curious little Salmonoid, the smallest known member of ita^ 

 family, and, perhaps, the most ancient in type,* plays a very impor- 

 tant part in connection with the great cod fisheries on the banks and 

 along the shores of Newfoundland, proving the most tempting bait 

 on which to take the latter fish when it approaches the shores to 

 spawn. This it does yearly in numbers baffling description, and the 

 manner in which the operation is performed is one of the most sin- 

 gular and interesting facts in its character. It may be observed that 

 the male and female differ so much in appearance at this season that 

 it would be difficult to believe they were of the same species. The 

 females are very like the common smelt, possessing, perhaps, more 

 metallic lustre, but the males are adorned by lines or ridges of flaccid 

 fringe, resembling velvet, which run just above the lateral line from 

 the upper angle of the operculum to base of tail. It is stated by so 

 many competent and credible authorities, that I think it deserves 

 to be placed on record as an authenticated fact, that the following is 

 the mode of proceeding. The time for the female depositing her 

 spawn having arrived, she is assisted by two male fish, one on each 



* Hugh. Miller, in his "Popular Greology," thus speaks of the caplin as 

 an inhabitant of the deep, in the latter days of the tertiary period : — " Clay 

 nodules of the drift period in Canada and the United States, are remark- 

 able for containing the only ichthyolite found by Agassiz among seventeen 

 hundred species which still continue to exist, and that can be exhibited in 

 consequence in duplicate specimens — the one fit for the table in the cha- 

 racter of a palatable viand ; the other for the shelves of a geological museum, 

 in the character of a curious ichthyolite. It ia the 3Iallotu8 vllloms, or 

 caplin. " 



