450 Reminiscences of 



him off into the lake a mile before liberating him from 

 the towing car, and caught him at the first place again 

 that evening. I liberated him the second time fully 

 three miles away and found him the following morning 

 at the old stand. 



The general movements of the Salmo family occur 

 in the night, as in ascending streams, however tor- 

 tuous or difficult, lying by in the daytime. Their 

 feeding also is done principally after dark, when they 

 are more daring and predatory, and they do not assume 

 their full night vigorousness in the dusky twilight, 

 nor by moonlight, but in the darker hours, when their 

 boldness is conspicuous, and will take the fly of sombre 

 color in preference to one of white. I have wondered 

 with their night adaptiveness of sight how little their 

 day shyness is indicated, when I have frequently had 

 them, in pursuit of small fish, dash up within hand 

 reach on flat rocks or the sandy beach where I have 

 been sitting. 



The lake water appears uniform as does the sea to the 

 casual observer, but there is a varying quality, and 

 many currents in both. These qualities are not ap- 

 parent to our coarser senses excepting in a very or- 

 dinary way, i)ut the respiratory organs of the fish, the 

 gills, etc., may be keenly sensitive to conditions of tem- 

 perature and water admixtures, even as our sense of 

 smell detects the faint odor of smoke in the country 

 fields or forest. The different qualities of water in 

 this lake of six miles in length which I inhabit now more 

 than others, are quite apparent to my taste, and I have 

 often remarked the odor in drinking water from the 

 sheltered coves, arising from vegetable matter; also 

 in that taken from a forty-or fifty-foot depth. 



