THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. Il5 
and after the ice leaves the bay, gill nets are kept constantly 
set, and visited from time to time. In these they catch white- 
fish chiefly, Coregonus laurette, a few salmon, Oncorhynchus gorbus- 
cha, and another undetermined species, and occasionally large 
individuals of a sea-run form of Salvelinus malma, the Pacific red- 
spotted trout. 
This fishing lasts from the middle or end of July into Septem- 
ber, but is never very productive. The trading parties that go 
east to the Colville river in the summer, also catch large quan- 
tities of fish. Salvelinus malma was so abundant in the summer 
of 1882, that the dogs were fed with it. 
Another food fish appeared on the coast in the summer of 
1882, which appears not to be utilized by the natives as they 
have not nets small enough to catch it. This is the caplin, AZa/- 
lotus villosus, which we netted by the thousand in the outlet of 
the lagoon close to the station, and found most excellent eating. 
The natives who live on the river running into Wainwright's 
inlet, seventy miles down the coast, also catch through the ice a 
good many smelts, Osmerus dentex, which are as delicious as the 
smelt of our coast. Fish, when cooked at all, are always boiled; 
as, indeed, all Esquimaux food is, but many are consumed raw 
or frozen. Very little of a fish is wasted except the scales and 
perhaps the larger bones. 
To close my account of the fish of this region, it may be well 
to say that the Esquimaux tell of a large lake between Point 
Barrow and the Colville, in which there are fish “as big as a 
kaiak.” This certainly has the appearance of a “ fish story.” 
COMPARATIVE EXCELLENCE OF FOOD FISHES. 
BY DR. JAMES A. HENSHALL. 
In this paper I design considering the relative merits of cer- 
tain fishes as food, solely as to their comparative excellence of 
flavor, and not, in any sense, as to their nutritive qualities, as 
