39 
and 7 localities dangerous or impossible of access in the 
old-style, unseaworthy flat-bottoms during the autumnal 
windstorms. The secluded habits of the European charrs 
explain in like manner the obscurity which has so long 
involved the life history of those fishes. Col. Hodge fur- 
ther claims that ordinary fishermen knew no difference be- 
tween the white and the brook trout, a thing not to be 
wondered at when such authorities as Garman and Bean 
failed at first to separate the forms. 
IJ. The more serious objection that no cause can be 
shown why the white trout, if a native, should suddenly 
increase in the lake, so as to attract the attention of hun- 
dreds of observers, and be taken literally by the ton, Com- 
missioner Hodge meets with the following clever theory : 
Before the introduction of black bass about 25 years ago, 
yellow perch swarmed in the lake, and there being then no 
smelt food, subsisted largely on the eggs and fry of the 
lake-spawning charr. At the spring hatching time, these 
perch held carnival among the helpless alevins, almost ef- 
fecting, by their periodic ravages, the extermination of the 
white trout. But as the black bass increased in number, 
they fell upon the perch in turn, until the lake was virtu- 
ally rid of this voracious pest. Thus the trout, which had 
been reduced to the verge of annihilation, had a chance to 
increase. The black bass did not interfere with it for two 
reasons : 
I. Both bass and trout have an abundance of easily 
caught and tasteful food in the land-locked smelts, which 
have multiplied since their introduction, until now they 
literally school in millions. 
Il. Bass and trout are not found in the same sections of 
water at the same time, the trout Keeping in a temperature 
of 42° to 45° (on the surface in May, 60 ft. below in July 
and August); the bass preferring 65° to 70° in summer, 
and hibernating in winter and during the spring hatching 
time of the trout. Thus freed from persecution, the saib- 
