388 APPENDIX. 



clean sandy beaches being its most favoured resorts. Dr. Gilpin 

 thus graphically describes its progress :— " The stream before us is 

 crowded with a multitudinous marine army, coming up from the sea 

 with the last of the flood, and running to reach the lakes to spawn. 

 A little further up it becomes deep and smooth, and is crossed by the 

 high road. Lying our length on the log bridge, we watch a continu- 

 ous stream passing slowly up, two or three inches apart. Further 

 up, and the river breaks over a smooth plane of slate stones too 

 shallow for the depth of the fish. Arrived at this plane the gaspe- 

 reau throws himself as far up as he can, and then commences a series 

 of spasmodic flaps with his tail. 



" Slowly and painfully he passes over and drops exhausted into the 

 tranquil pool above. Utterly exhausted, they lie heads and tails in 

 a confused mass. Presently recruiting, their heads all pointing up 

 stream, they again commence their march. In countless hordes they 

 sweep through lonely still waters, the home of the trout, cool and 

 pellucid enough to tempt a weary way wanderer, but on and on his 

 irresistible instinct drives him. A natural dam, some two or three 

 feet elevation, and over which the waters fall with a perpendicular 

 rush, now arrests his progress. He throws himself (no doubt with a 

 vigorous sweep of tail) directly at it. That about two and a half to 

 three feet is his utmost range, the many failures he m.akes before he 

 drops into the pool above attest. 



" He has now gained his lake, often a very small one in the heart 

 of the forest, and perhaps at six hundred feet elevation from high 

 water mark. And now commences his brief courtship, for, unlike 

 the lordly salmon who dallies until November, our fish has but little 

 time for delay. Camping on the lake-side of a moonlight night, you 

 hear a swash in the water. " What fish in that ? " you ask your 

 Indian ; " Gaspereau," is his answer. The trout-fisher by day sees the 

 surface of the lake ruffled by a hundred fins, then the trout break all 

 around him. " See the gaspereau hunting the trout," he says. But 

 these are only his harmless gambols, coloured by the resistless instinct 

 of reproduction. He has even been known to rise at a fly, and to take 

 a bait on these waters. Although the salmon and trout are often seen 

 spawning, I never met any one who has seen the Gaspereau in the act. 



" In three or four weeks after leaving the salt water, his brief 

 holiday over, our fish commences his return. Unnerved by the 

 exhausting toil of reproduction, by the absence of food (on the lakes 

 their stomachs are found empty), and perchance by the warming 

 Bummer waters, he addresses himself to the perils and dangers of 



