41*2 rniLOSOPHXCAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1773. 



devouring every fish* they can overcome, but likevifise feeding on putrefying 

 deer, or other carrion that comes in their way; even stones are sometimes swal- 

 lowed to satisfy their insatiable appetite, of which Mr. Graham was himself a 

 witness, having taken a stone of a pound weight out of the stomach of this 

 fish. The pike is often obliged to fall a victim, together with the trout, 

 tickomeg, and others, to this rapacious fish. After sunset, it is caught by a 

 night hook. It does not masticate its food before deglutition. Its roe and liver 

 are reckoned a delicacy, when fresh caught; but they turn rancid and- oily in a 

 few days, though kept frozen solid all the time. At Hudson's Bay this fish is 

 thought to be dry and insipid; its weight is from 1 to 8 pounds. 



The 3d species of fish, from this cold climate, is by the natives called tickomeg, 

 and is our gwiniad or salmo lavaretus, Linn.; only the size is somewhat larger, 

 for the greatest specimen sent over measures 18 inches from the head to the tip 

 of the tail, is 44- inches deep, and not above an inch and ^ thick. This fish 

 differs in no circumstance from our gwiniad, but the length. Mr. Pennant 

 mentions in the British Zoology, vol. 3, p. 269, a ferra or gwiniad from Swit- 

 zerland 15 inches long, as an uncommon size;-|- the Hudson's Bay fish, as I 

 have before observed, is 1 8 inches long, and 4^ inches its greatest depth. The 

 great abundance of food, and the small number of inhabitants, who let the fish 

 grow up undisturbed, are perhaps the causes of their uncommon size. They 

 weigh from 14- pound to 3 pounds, says Mr. Graham ; but the fish Mr. F. 

 examined must, when fresh, have weighed more. These fish abound in the 

 river Severn in Hudson's Bay, from its origin in the great lakes to its mouth, where 

 it empties itself into the bay. The natives catch 3 or 6 hundred a day, by 

 means of wears which they contrive in the river: they will not take bait, and are 

 poor at the breaking of the ice in the river. In the middle of the summer, after 

 a gale of wind, they are often found thrown up into the marshes, and on the 

 shoals, where they remain at the recess of the water and abating of the wind, 

 and serve as food to numbers of crows. The inhabitants of Hudson's Bay 

 think this fish very sweet, and good to eat, contrary to the opinion of many 

 Europeans. 



The 4th and last fish brought from Hudson's Bay, is there called a sucker, 

 because it lives by suction, according to Mr. Graham's account, who also says 

 there are 1 varieties of this fish, both of a whitish colour, but one distinguished 

 by a mixture of beautiful red. In the smallest of 2 specimens brought over, a 

 broad stripe of red could be observed all along the linea lateralis. They are very 

 numerous in the creeks and rivers, and troublesome in overburdening the nets. 



* This too is the fish that makes such havock in the lake of Geneva. P. — Orig. 

 t However, the gwiniads of Lapland, a similar climate to that of the Hudson's Bay, are vastly 

 large. Brit. Zool. 3, 297, note.— Orig. 



