EEPORT OF STATE BOARD OP FISH COMMISSIONERS. 47 



In the lakes of Greenland and the eastern part of British America, 

 the European charr {Salvelinus alpinus) is as abundant as it is in 

 Europe — a fact which has been only lately made manifest, and even 

 yet there is some question whether some of these which are found in 

 the lakes in New Hampshire have not some time or other been brought 

 over and planted there from Europe. 



In the lakes of Maine, and on the north, there is still another charr, 

 smaller and finer than the European one, the Blue-])ack trout of the 

 Rangley Lakes, known as Salvelinus oquassa. 



Thus, instead of one of the salmon, salmon trout, trout, and charr, of 

 Europe, we have in the Eastern States the same salmon, the same 

 charr, and three other charrs, but neither the trout nor the salmon 

 trout. 



In coming to the Pacific Coast, the settlers of California brought the 

 names with them from the East, but found none of the fishes to which 

 they had been accustomed. Salmon they found, similar in habits and 

 in value as food, but many of them larger, finer, and vastly more 

 abundant than any of the salm'on of Europe. California salmon differ 

 from all the rest of the salmon family in the fact that the number of 

 rays in the anal fin is from fourteen to twenty, while in all the salmon 

 and trout on the other side of the Atlantic this fin contains no more 

 than nine or ten rays. The Pacific Coast salmon have also an increased 

 number of branchiostegals, an increased number of gill-rakers, and a 

 much larger number of pyloric creca, or glands, about the stomach. 

 They are, therefore, in strictness, not salmon at all, but something 

 more intensely salmon than the salmon of Europe itself really is. They 

 have therefore been placed in another genus known as Oncorhynchus. 

 For the lack of any other common name they are always spoken of 

 and will always be canned, as long as the canning industry lasts, under 

 the name of Salmon. The Chinook name, Quinnat, was early applied 

 to them, and if we feel the need of some other name to distinguish 

 them from real salmon we may call the Pacific Coast salmon Quinnat, 

 or Quinnat Salmon. These species all live in the ocean, ascend the 

 rivers in the spring and summer, spawn in fresh water in the fall, the 

 young, as soon as they are able to swim, floating tail foremost down 

 the river and growing rapidly as soon as they reach the ocean and the 

 peculiar ocean food. There are five species of these Quinnats, which 

 will be described farther on. 



Besides the salmon, the settlers of California found in the brooks an 

 abundance of what they called trout. These are black-spotted, silver- 

 scaled, and in every way closely resemble the trout of Europe, and are 

 wholly unlike the charr, or so-called trout of the Eastern States. The 

 name trout by rights belongs to these fishes, and they are placed in the 

 genus Salmo. The three species of trout found in the Pacific waters 

 will be mentioned farther on. One of these is so similar to the Salmon 

 trout of Europe that it might fairly be called, as it often is called, by 

 the same name. 



A charr is also found in Pacific waters, but as the name "charr" had 

 been wholly forgotten by our ancestors, they could only call this, like 

 the others, a trout. In Oregon the red-spotted trout, or charr, is distin- 

 guished by the name of Bull trout. In California it had, for a long 

 time, no distinctive name. A landlady in some hotel in the neighbor- 

 hood of the United States Fish Hatchery at Baird, on the McCloud 



