174 AMERICAN GAME. 



of his family, as the salmon-trout, or sea-trout, the 

 spotted, or brook-trout, the several varieties of lake-trout 

 peculiar to the great inland waters of this country, and 

 the many other more distantly connected species which 

 it is unnecessary here to enumerate, though it may be 

 well to state that the White fish of the lakes, the Otsego 

 bass, the smelt, and the capelinn, are all of this family. 



These fin rays in the true salmon are as follows : in 

 the first dorsal, 15 second dorsal, pectorals, each. 

 14 ventrals, each, 10 anal, 13 caudal fin, or tail, 21. 



I have been more particular in dwelling on these par- 

 ticulars, because I am well aware that there are many 

 good sportsmen throughout the country in the habit of 

 miscalling many fishes, from ignorance of the true dis 

 tinctive marks, who will gladly receive information 

 which, as a general rule, can only be obtained from 

 costly scientific works, out of the reach of the mass of 

 men, and entirely unattainable in remote inland districts. 

 A little attention to these distinctions would soon put an 

 end to all the confusion now arising from the application 

 of the same names to entirely different fishes in different 

 sections of the country ; even as a little attention to the 

 habits and seasons of the finny, no less than of the 

 feathery and fur-clad tribes, would tend at least to pre- 

 vent their indiscriminate and cruel destruction at seasons 

 when they are busy in the work of reproduction, and 

 when, as it would seem by a special dispensation of 

 Providence, they are unfit for the food of man. 



