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Variation in colour and form as well as size is to be observed. From rapid 
streams the trout are lithe and long-finned, from quiet lakes rounder and short- 
finned, while from cool brooks the most vividly coloured individuals are obtained, 
and from dark pools those with sombre hues. 
The food of the brook trout is chiefly formed of insects and insect larve 
(mosquito and black-fly larvee among the number) it is therefore not surprising 
that, with the cultivation of the country and the consequent reduction of breed- 
ing places for flies, the trout should have become scarcer as well as the food. 
Like the salmon, the Brook Trout seeks gravelly bottoms in streams to deposit 
the spawn in the fall of the year, the season lasting from three to six months. 
The female excavates a nest in the gravel, fans out the sand by means of the 
anal fin, the male keeping watch while this operation is in progress. The eggs 
are three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, varying, however, considerably in 
size and in number with the weight of the fish. A one pound trout has furnished 
1,800, but the numbers are not proportionately large for the bigger fish on account 
of the larger size of the eggs in these. 
The amount of time which the eggs take to hatch is a question of tempera- 
ture. Fifty days in water of 50°F. is an experiment of the hatching house, but 
this may be diminished to thirty-two days in water of 54°, and prolonged to one 
hundred and sixty-five days in water of 37°. The last condition is that which 
obtains in nature. The yolk-sac is absorbed in another month or two after 
hatching, when the independent life of the young trout begins, 
The only remaining physostomous fishes of economical importance are the 
members of the pike family (the Esocip%.) In passing to them, however, refer- 
ence may be made to certain inconspicuous forms which properly belong here. 
The first is the trout-perch (Percopsis guttatus), a little fish of six inches in length 
combining the characters of the fish named. It has a small adipose fin, ten pyloric 
cceca, and its mouth is more like that of a perch than of a salmonoid. It spawns 
in spring. | 
A second group is formed by various minnow-like fish such as the spring min- 
now, Fundulus diaphanus, a member of the family Cyprinodontid, resembling 
the minnows in their protractile jaws, but differing from them in their being for the 
most part brackish water fish, and of ovoviviparous habit. The mud-minnows, 
(Umbra lim) which are everywhere abundant in ditches, resemble the foregoing 
in their habits, but are more like miniature pike in structure. 
The members of the pike family (Esocide) are characterized by an elongated 
body with prolonged and depressed snout. The mouth is adapted by its 
wide gape and its formidable armature of teeth to the voracious habits of the fish. 
The dorsal fin is far back over the anal in all, and there is no adipose fin. All 
belong to the genus Esox, which includes some lesser pike confined to the States 
(there called pickerel), and the two species that are common in Ontario, Z. 
lwevus, the common pike—Indian Kenosha (French rendering Kinongé)—and £. 
nobilior, the great pike or maskinongé. 
These species may be distinguished from each other by the circumstance that 
in the pike, #. lucius, the cheeks are scaly, the gill-covers bare, while in the 
maskinongé the lower halves of the cheeks as well as the gill-covers are destitute 
of scales. The branchiostegal rays also are 14 to 16 in the pike, 17 to 19 in the 
maskinongé, while the colouration of the former species is light spotted on a dark 
ground, of the latter, dark spotted on a light ground. 
The pike proper is common to both sides of the Atlantic; the maskinongé is 
confine| to the basin of the St. Lawrence. Both species spawn in spring, the 
