THE LAKE TROUT. 485 



into the skin, which has become smooth and slimy. The heads of the females have not changed 

 much, but the heads of the males have become more or less pointed, their jaws have developed 

 rows of large white teeth, and the whole expression of their face has become ferocious and repulsive 

 in the extreme. They are now fast losing their marks of nobility with which nature had so richly 

 endowed them in their broad ocean domains. They begin to spawn at the McCloud station the 

 latter part of August, and from that time to the end, which soon comes, their downward progress 

 is rapid. They grow less comely in appearance, more slimy to the touch, more unsymmetrical in 

 form; parasites collect by thousands in their gills and under their fins; their tails and fins fray off; 

 a white and loathsome fungus gathers over all i)arts of them, frequently destroying their eyesight ; 

 and swarms of suckers — the carrion-birds among fishes — wait about them to feed upon their 

 lifeless bodies when they die. For some unknown and strange reason, the Salmon in the higher 

 tributaries do not hasten back to the salt water which would clean their bodies of the parasites 

 and fungus and restore their appetite and with it their health and vigor, but they linger, with a 

 strange indifference to their fate, around the spots where they have deposited their eggs, waiting 

 patiently for the only possible relief from their wretchedness, which is death. 



Some uninformed persons, who have never seen these fish in their natural habits, have 

 expressed some incredulity in regard to their all dying after they have spawned. Under this 

 head, I will only say that it is probably true that those that spawn near the ocean return to the 

 ocean and recover their vitality, but those that pass the United States station on the McCloud 

 River in the summer never do. In order to make sure whether I was mistaken in my views about 

 it, I took the testimony, a year ago^ of all the white men who have lived or worked on the river, 

 and of all the Indians I could reach. It was the unanimous testimony of all that the Salmon which 

 pass the McCloud hatching station in the summer, on their way up the river to spawn, die in the 

 river and never return to the ocean. 



In conctusion I will say that the Quinnat Salmon has been a favored object of artificial 

 culture. It was among the first of the fishes to receive attention from Professor Baird, the 

 United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, who, in 1872, deputized the writer tq go to 

 the Pacific coast to collect and distribute its eggs. Since that time over fifty million Qtiinnat 

 Salmon eggs have been distributed over the world, or hatched for the benefit of the Sacramento 

 River. Professor Baird has in some instances sent them as far as Denmark, Germany, Russia, 

 New Zealand, and Australia. 



163. THE NAMAYCUSH OR lAKE TROUT— SALVELINUS NAMAYCUSH. 



The Lake Trout, or Salmon Trout, is a non-migratory species inhabiting the chain of Great 

 Lakes from Superior to Ontario, as well as Lake Champlain and many other smaller lakes of the 

 United States and of British America. With the exception of the doubtful species known as the 

 " Siscowet," its nearest relative is the Brook Trout of the Eastern States, Salvelinus fontinalis. The 

 Lake Trout is, in fact, a member of the same group of the salmon family with the Chars. Gill 

 and Jordan were the first to point out that the true relations of the Lake Trout are with the Chars 

 rather than with the Salmon. The Lake Trout is peculiar to North America and its inland seas, 

 though the Char and the Black-spotted Trout are very similar to European forms. Every one is 

 familiar with the phenomenon of the Land-locked Salmon, these fish being true Salmon for a time 

 debarred from access to the sea, assuming a peculiar coloration, and with habits modified by con- 

 finement within narrower bounds than those of others of the same species which are free to range 

 between river and ocean. 



The Lake Trout appears to have undergone somewhat similar modifications. It is a Char, 

 not land-locked, bat placed under conditions directly opposite to those connected with those which 



