AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 



147 



ence between a malacoterygian and an acanthopterian; nor 

 between the chondropterygian and the branchrostegous, I 

 shall say nothing on that subject. The drawing will de- 

 scribe the species very exactly. You know its habitat, 

 and can say that this fine variety of the finest genus of fishes, 

 lives in a lake of pure water, where it may, at its discretion, 

 vary the temperature from that which is found near the 

 surface, affected by the sun's rays, to that at an hundred 

 feet depth, where, throughout the year, Fahrenheit's ther- 

 mometer remains at 46° 



Do you remember our letting a black bottle down with a 

 line to the greatest depth of the lake, in order to ascertain 

 the temperature there, and after bringing it up full — the 

 pressure of the water having forced in the cork, which we 

 had left in the bottle as we found it — our discussion as to 

 what could have given the water at the bottom its singular 

 taste and deep colour; and conjecturing that at the depth to 

 which the bottle had been sunk, there must be some pecu- 

 liar kind of aquatic plant — unknown, undisturbed, a treasure 

 for the botanist, if it could be got at — which had given to 

 the contents of the bottle its strange taste and hue? — and on 

 our taking the bottle to the house, to get others to form 

 their conjectures on a subject so important to science, our 

 being asked where we had got the bottle, and whether be- 

 fore letting it down, we had poured out the wine that was 

 in it? But to return to our Trout: Ask Dr. D. what he 

 would give to hook and land safely, a trout twenty-four and 

 a half inches long and six pounds weight. This beats yours; 

 the largest you caught weighed only four pounds and three 

 quarters, and measured twenty-three inches. Don't dis- 

 pute this; for the weight and measure were all correctly 

 "booked down." 



You know that in the outlet, or stream from the lake, 

 none of the lake trout were ever found; and that in the 

 lake we have never seen but one of the creek trout, and that 

 was an uncommonly large one. In other lakes, and there 

 are many small ones in this county, where there are none of 

 the lake trout, the red-spotted trout of the streams, or salmo 

 fontinalis, is the common and only one. That the two 

 may be compared, they are both shown on the paper which 

 is enclosed. The lake trout is longer, more slender, and 

 has a forked tail. You know that this trout will not rise at 

 a fly, like the common trout of the streams; and that it is 

 caught only with small fish as bait. The two kinds differ 

 much in size; the lake trout is seldom caught so small as 

 one pound weight, the creek trout seldom so large. I have 

 been frequently puzzled to imagine where the small lake 

 trout keep themselves. One of your citizens, whose ideas 

 of rivers were probably formed from the Delaware at Phi- 

 ladelphia, when he saw the Susquehanna at Wilkesbarre, ex- 

 pressed his surprise that a river could be so little. From 

 the description given to me of the trout in the lakes north 



of this, in the states of New York, Vermont, &c. , I think 

 they are of the same species as those in Silver Lake; but I 

 believe the latter to be their southern limit. 



I have not observed the colours of the lake trout to vary 

 at different times of the year; but the colours of the male of 

 the red-spotted trout change very much, and are deeper and 

 much more brilliant at one season than at another; like the 

 males of most kinds of birds, whose feathers become gayer 

 at the time of courtship; so that the honeymoon garb of 

 some of them, makes them look like different birds from 

 what they are the rest of the year. So it is with the creek 

 trout, of which the drawing represents one in his Septem- 

 ber dress, his back of a rich olive, lighter on the sides, 

 sprinkled with brilliant spots of vermilion, and his fins 

 tinted with vermilion, a rich black, and a pure white. You 

 have seen a dying dolphin — not the dolphin of the ichthy- 

 ologists — the porpus or delphinus tergo recurvo, which the 

 ancient writers say was so fond of music, and (fide majus!) 

 carried Arion when he was cast, like a bait, upon the waters; 

 but the dolphin of the sailors, the coryphcena hippuris — 

 and therefore you know how suddenly and how surprisingly 

 the colours of a fish may be changed. 



Old Walton says, that " in England trout spawn about 

 October or November; but in some rivers a little sooner or 

 later." Their spawning time here is much the same. How 

 I admired old Walton when I was a boy ! I believe I have 

 read every thing which has been published on the " dis- 

 portes in fishynge," from his celebrated work down to the 

 "New, Plain, and Complete Treatise on the Art of Ang- 

 ling, by T. F. Salter, Esq.," adorned with a plate of the 

 author, but terribly out of costume for a fisherman — publish- 

 ed in 1825, which you sent me about two years ago. I 

 have even read the Nautical Idylls of Hugo Grotius, and 

 the Piscatory Eclogues of Sannazarius, in hopes of glean- 

 ing something from them, which might be useful to the 

 " brothers of the angle:" but the latter was much like a ce- 

 lebrated breeder of cattle sending for Miss Edgeworth's 

 Treatise on Irish Bulls. 



I think I was about twelve years of age, when I first read 

 old Isaac's treatise, "being," as he says in his title page, 

 "a Discourse of Fish and Fishing, not unworthy the peru- 

 sal of most Anglers;" and I have never forgot some stanzas 

 of his Angler's song, particularly the one: 



" When I the ihoughtlesss trout espy, 

 Devour my worm, or simple fly, 

 How poor, how small a thing 1 find 

 Can captivate a greedy miud! 

 But when none bite, the wise I praise 

 Whom hope of profit ne'es betrays." 



That is, I admired the poetic fisherman; but fear I never 

 learnt any thing from the fishing moralist; and when the 



