270 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 
From this, in 1792, the old German compiler 
Johann Julius Walbaum gave them their scientific 
name of Salmo mykiss, and to this day and for- 
ever Salmo mykiss} is the scientific name of the 
Cut-throat Trout. 
Finding Alaska a good “ fishing-ground,” the 
trout spread itself through all its rivers. The 
conditions of cold clear water from the mountains 
to the sea are much the same all the way from 
the Yukon to Fraser’s River and the Columbia and 
even as far south as the Umpqua and the Klamath. 
To all these, one after another, the Cut-throat 
Trout came from the North. The ocean offering 
easy access from the mouth of one to the mouth 
of another, there is very little difference to this 
day among the colonies inhabiting the different 
river basins. The Mad River and Elk River in 
Humboldt County, California, mark the southern 
limit of the extension of the Cut-throat Trout 
along the west coast by processes of ordinary 
transfer from river to river by way of the sea. 
Ascending the Columbia River,? the trout 
1 By the laws of scientific nomenclature, the oldest name of any 
species is its right name, all questions of which name is the best 
or sounds the best being disregarded. he Cut-throat Trout 
was called Salmo mykiss in Kamchatka by Walbaum in 1792, 
Salmo muikisi by Schneider in 1801, Salmo purpuratus by Pallas 
in 1811; these specimens being all of the AZykiss of Kamchatka. 
It was named Salmo clarkii by Richardson in 1836, from Columbia 
River specimens. A number of other names, as Salmo stellatus, 
brevicauda, and aurora, were applied by Dr. Charles Girard to 
specimens brought in by the Pacific Railroad Survey. 
2 The Cut-throat Trout of the Lower Columbia and of Puget 
Sound cannot be distinguished from that found in Alaska. It is, 
however, sometimes given a separate name in science, as Sa/me 
mykiss clarkit. 
