ILLUSTRATIONS. 113 



gether. Upon being put into the water this has separated, and the young eelj 

 were perfect, and, although not bigger than a gmall thread, have swam about ; 

 this discovery always took place the end of summer, or beginning of autumn, and 

 has been adduced as evidence of their going down to the salt water to spawn. 

 (Daniel's Rural Sports, vol. 3.) On the other hand, it is said,> the Philoso- 

 phical Magazine, (vol. 34.) that they have indeed been generally supposed vivi- 

 parous; u but the immense abundance of the young certainly bespeaks an ovi- 

 parous progeny, and this is supported by analogy in the lamprey eel, which 

 breeds commonly enough in most of our estuaries.'' 



NOTE 27 



Hudson, the day on which he arrived at Sandy Hook, (September 3d, 1609) 

 saw, as he denominates them, " Many salmons, mulletts, and rays, very great :" 

 and when he passed through the Highlands on the 14th, he says there were 

 44 great store of salmons in the river." 



It is not impossible but that this might have been the case. The Mohawk riv- 

 er formerly contained trout, a species of the genus salnao, but it now has none. 

 Fishes sometimes leave their former haunts and repair to other places where they 

 can find food more agreeable or abundant, and where they deposite their spawn 

 with greater safety. It is now well known, that no salmon are ever seen in the 

 Hudson, except a few eEtrays who have missed their way into the Connecticut 

 river. Salmon delight in clear, cool, and limpid water, and the Hudson is, par- 

 ticularly at the period of their vernal migration, discoloured and muddy. Since 

 the wood creek which falls into the western lakes has been connected with the 

 Mohawk river, by a canal, the latter has been supplied \vith a species of dace 

 which has greatly increased ; and black basse and a salmon have been taken who 

 penetrated through the canal to the river: it would be a curious circumstance if 

 the Hudson should receive the salmon through this new channel, and a singular 

 voyage for this fish to enter, from the ocean, the Gulf of St.Lawrence, to swim up 

 Ihe river of that name to Lake Ontario, pa?s up the Onondaga river by Oswego, 

 totheOneida lake, ascend Wood Creek to the waters of the Mohawk" river, and 

 . oter them by the canal, vault down the grt-at fails of the Cohoes, descend tke 

 Hudson, and return at the next vernal migration to the St Lawrence. Inde- 

 pendently of the nature cf the waters, and the food they furnish, there must be 

 ?ome laleui cause for the preference which is give:) by fishes to certain rivers ; 



av IIP. in so:ne measure, ascribed tn tlvir periodical return to the 

 P 



