28 DESCRIPTION, CLASSIFICATION, AND 



no individuals of such large size are seen, and the 

 average length is very much less. Dr. Hugh M. Smith 

 says that of several thousand specimens examined by 

 him from this lake in 1891 none were found to be 

 over seven inches long, and the average was less than 

 six inches. He adds : " This stunting of growth, which 

 is said to be gradually becoming more marked, has no 

 doubt been produced by the unnatural conditions to 

 which the fish are subjected. The extent to which this 

 dwarfing has gone may be readily judged when it is 

 stated that fish only four or five inches long have 

 been caught with ripe spawn." * That the fresh- 

 water salmon of the Lake St. John country rarely 

 attains to more than one -fourth or one -fifth of the 

 size of the salmon that go down from neighboring 

 waters to the sea need excite no surprise, in view of 

 the well-established fact that under conditions unfa- 

 vorable to continued development the alewife of Lake 

 Ontario has in less than twenty years become dwarfed 

 to one-half its former size. 



Anglers have gone to Lake St. John for ouananiche 

 who had fished for its American congener in Maine, 

 where it is popularly termed landlocked salmon. Be- 

 cause of the difference in the sport of catching the 

 two fish they could scarcely be persuaded that there 

 was no varietal distinction between them. "While the 

 fresh -water salmon of Maine is largely a bottom 

 feeder, save in the spring of the year, when the water 

 that it inhabits is still cold, its Lake St. John kinsman 



* " Report on an Investigation of the Fisheries of Lake Ontario," 

 by Hugh M. Smith, M.D., iu the Bulletin of the U. 8. Fish Commis- 

 sion, vol. x., p. 188. 



