136 



Its meat is said to be excellent and it m certainly very 

 prolific. It is supposed to be the principal food of the 

 brook trout of that region which attain the enormous 

 weight of eight or ten pounds, the largest reached by any 

 of the true brook trout in America. 



A few of these fish have been lately sold in New York 

 miarket. Before that they had not been an article of 

 commerce, nor much prized as a delicacy even by the 

 inhabitants of the country where they dwelt. 



Its first dorsal fin is higher and narrower than that of 

 the trout, its caudal is mor.e forked and its sides have no 

 carmine or vermilliou specks, but instead large yellow 

 spots which become a pale blue after the fish has been 

 kept some time out of w^ter. It makes its appearance in 

 the outlets and inlets of the lake on the tenth day of 

 October, when it comes up to spawn. It is punctual in 

 its yearly reappearance for that purpose to the very day, 

 and the inhabitants expect to draw much of their winter 

 gupplies of smoked and salted fish from its hordes. It 

 averages from seven to nine inches in length-^never rame, 

 and in weight three to four ounces. 



In 1874- the Fishery Commissioners of Maine succeeded 

 in obtaining 30,000 of the eggs of this variety, and as 

 they had more than they needed, 5,000 of them were 

 purchased for our state. We regret to say they did not 

 reach the state hatching house in very good condition, 

 nearly a thousand dying on the way or the day after tieir 

 arrival. Some hundreds of them however, hatched oat. 



We have reason to believe that the blue backed trout 

 is found in Oregon, and possibly in some of the lakes of 

 Northern California, bat its culture artificially, will not 

 probably prove profitable. 



Smelt. — These fish which are a variety of the salmon- 

 oids are to be treated' very differently from the trout and 



