194 



REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



this now neglected form of bait they would find it to their advantage, not only in 

 availing themselves of an excellent fish bait, but also in reducing the numbers of the 

 most serious fish parasite. (See methods of collecting them, described later). The 

 adult Sea Lampreys are often three feet in length, and are captured in great numbers 

 as they come into the shallow streams in the spring to spawn. They are dressed and 

 preserved in barrels or "pickled down," being highly esteemed as food and having an 

 equal exchange value with pork, a barrel of pickled lampreys being worth a barrel of 

 pickled pork. 



The Lake Lamprey {Petromyzon marinus unicolor Linnaeus) [see illustration No. i , 

 a and b~\ is but a land-locked or lake-locked form or variety of its ancestor, the Sea 

 Lamprey. It has become much smaller in size and darker and more uniform in color 



(*) 



NO. i — ADULT SPAWNING MALE (A) AND FEMALE (B) LAKE LAMPREYS. 



than the Sea Lamprey is at present. The representatives of this species average less 

 than a foot and a half in length, although there is an extreme variation of at least a 

 foot in length of mature individuals found on the spawning beds. As the Lake 

 Lampreys in their adult stage feed upon nothing but the blood of fishes and thus 

 become very destructive, they are to become the .main feature of this article, and th^ir 

 discussion is reserved until after the following description of some features of the 

 Brook Lamprey. 



The Brook Lamprey {Lampetra wilder i Jordan and Evermann*) is to be found 



* In the excellent "Synopsis of Fishes of Middle and North America," Jordan and Evermann 

 attribute the original description under above scientific name to S. H. Gage, but it is not at all 

 described by him in the article referred to by them, and when we told him that the authors of the 

 " Synopsis " had described it under the above name, referring to his authorship, he was very much 

 in doubt; and finally after looking it up for himself he said : " Surely I am not the author of that 

 name or description." Knowing thus that Jordan and Evermann are the authors of both name and 

 description it is but right to refer to their proper source. 



