The Grayling Family 175 



gracefully and effectually as the nodding plume 

 of a duchess. 



The grayling was named by the ancients 

 Thymallus, owing to a smell of thyme that was 

 said to emanate from the fish when freshly 

 caught. However that may have been in days 

 of old, it is not so now, though an odor of 

 cucumbers is sometimes perceptible when it is 

 just out of the water. But the name, if not the 

 odor, has endured to the present day, for Thy- 

 mallus is still its generic appellation. The gray- 

 lings were formerly included in the salmon 

 family, and are still so considered by European 

 ichthyologists, who include them in the genus 

 Salmo. Dr. Theodore Gill, however, has formed 

 them into a separate family (Thymallidcz), owing 

 to the peculiar structure of the skull, whereby 

 the parietal bones meet at the median line, 

 excluding the frontal bones from the supra- 

 occipital; whereas in the other salmonids the 

 parietals are separated by the intervention of 

 the supra-occipital bone, which connects with 

 the frontals. 



There are three species in America: one in 

 the Arctic regions, one in Michigan, and one 

 in Montana. To the untrained eye no great 



