GILPIN — -OISI THE GASPEREAUX. 113 



affects individuals is still unknown. Blue-backs are often seen 

 ascending the rivers, but I have no evidence of any being found 

 descending them. Their more valuable congener, the shad,* is 

 subject to the same change. 



Of the food of gaspereaux, one would suppose from the tooth- 

 less jaws and wide extensive gape, so unlike the recurved teeth and 

 armed tongue of the genus salmo, evidently formed for seizing 

 li-vdng and struggling food, that he was fed by gelatuious masses 

 sucked into a Avide mouth. Of his rising to a fly, and taking 

 bait in the lakes, we have proof, and Dekay asserts, the stomach of 

 one he examined was filled with shrimps. Dekay' s descriptions 

 refer to a smaller and longer proportioned fish than ours, with the 

 eye further from the end of nose, but otherwise it tallies ^vith ours, 

 and his plate is good. From him, too, we learn that its southern range 

 is the Chesapeake, where he appears in April. From Perley we find 

 his northern range, Miramichi, which river he ascends to spawn in 

 the lakes from which it has its source. Though doubtless it was 

 known from the earliest discoveries of the province, f yet Latrobe, 

 in the Philosophical Transactions of America, was the first to describe 

 it, and give it the specific name, '^'tyr annus" precedmg Peck, who 

 calls it "serrattis," in Belknap's History of Xew Hampshire, I 

 have not the exact date to refer to, but somewhere about 1780. 

 As an article of food, Avhen eaten fresh, it is not held in great 

 estimation in our markets. A^Tien slightly struck with salt and 

 smoke-dried it is called a " Kiack," and is very palatable. Many 

 are cured in this way about Lunenburg and the Atlantic seaboard. 

 The Indians dry them in the sun about their wigwams, but the 

 usual way is to salt them in barrels like herrmg, and use them in 

 each family for home consumption. Their leanness makes them a 

 good export for the West Indies, as the fat herring becomes com- 

 pletely decomposed into oil by the climate. As is the case with all 

 fish which perform annual migrations to spawn in fresh water, they 

 gTadually desert cultivated countries. The various obstructions to 



* The Rev. Ferdinand Gauvreau, P. P., Memremcook, N. B., says of tke shad, 

 " the first run are green on the back, the second a pale green, and the third run 

 have blue backs, and are the best fish." — Perley's Report, p. 144. 



t Beamish Murdoch, Esq., was kind enough to point out to me, in Mons. Beny's 

 History of Acady, 1675, the word " Gasperot." This gentleman, who describes what 

 he saw with the liveliness of an eye witness, says of them truly enough, " they are not 

 equal to the herring for eating." 



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