268 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



The trout is in California now. It is everywhere 

 in California. There is no brook so poor that a 

 trout cannot somewhere or sometime find a place 

 in it. Even the driest " Arroyo Seco " has at its 

 head somewhere a living spring, and here the 

 trout remains until the winter rains release him. 

 Moreover the trout was not always in California. 

 At some time or other he came to California from 

 the far Northwest. All this we know very well. 

 We know it as well as we know that the sonorous 

 Spanish names came to California from the South, 

 or that Saxon enterprise came over the plains, 

 across the Isthmus, and around the Horn. 



The records of the trout are less perfect than 

 the stories of the Argonauts or the annals of the 

 Mission Fathers. But some records there are, and 

 whatever these records tell is true as far as it goes. 

 Let us piece these records out, joining their facts 

 by lines of least resistance. Let us frame a history 

 of what may have been true, and it will remain 

 true until some one can read the records better. 



The trout was born in Europe on the flanks of 

 the glacial mountains. The salmon was its parent. 

 The environment of landlocked lakes and glacial 

 streams determined its character. From northern 

 fjords and mossy brooks it spread over Siberia. 



called the beautiful red-spotted charr of our New England streams a 

 " trout." They had never seen a charr in the South of England, and 

 had probably never even heard the name. Trout and salmon they 

 knew well, and gave their names to the fishes of the New World 

 that seemed most like them. There is no genuine trout in 

 America east of the Great Plains. The Eastern Brook Trout 

 or Speckled Trout is a Charr. No higher praise can be given to 

 a Salmonoid than to call it a Charr. 



