246 ' REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



multitudes die every year in early summer. From the best information obtainable the 

 fish die from a change in the temperature of the water. Coming from the deep cold 

 water at the bottom into the warm surface water, heated by the summer's sun, they 

 make a spasmodic movement, turn over and die in such quantities that the surface of 

 the water is covered with them, and it is sometimes a problem to get rid of their 

 decayed and decaying bodies. In Cayuga Lake they are found in very deep water, 

 but when drawn to the surface, succumb with a motion of their bodies which 

 fishermen call a "fit." They furnish an abundance of food for certain fishes, and are 

 an excellent bait, but are not regarded as food for mankind when taken in the interior 

 lakes. In color it is "bluish above; sides silvery; indistinct dark stripes along the 

 row of scales ; a blackish spot behind opercle." 



Common Wl)ifefisl). 



Of nine species of whitefish in this country the common whitefish or Great Lakes 

 whitefish is the best known and most highly valued as a food fish. It is one of the 

 most delicate of table fishes, as it feeds on minute organisms, and a form of this fish 

 found in Otsego Lake, and there called Otsego bass, is as highly prized as any food 

 fish which swims in our waters. In fact, there has always been a halo about the 

 "Otsego bass" as a superior food for "Gods and honest fisher folk" that time and 

 distance will not dispel. If, however, there is a more delicate and delicious fish than 

 the whitefish from Hemlock and Canandaigua Lakes, where this Commission propagate 

 the species, I think an epicure would give good money of the Republic to know where 

 the fish is to be found. Fresh from the water, the flesh of the fish is white, firm, rich 

 and with a delicate flavor all its own. But, to be at its best, the fish must be eaten 

 near the place where it is taken when the water is cold. 



When the Fisheries, Game and Forest Commission began to propagate whitefish 

 at Canandaigua, and later at Hemlock Lake, it was believed that the fish was 

 Richardson's whitefish, CoregomiS labradoricus, and it was referred to in papers and 

 correspondence of the Commission as the Labrador whitefish, but a more careful 

 examination of specimens by Dr. Bean led him to believe there was some mystery 

 about the classification of the whitefishes and he made a study of the whole question 

 and published the result of his conclusions in "Science," which is here reproduced: 



IDENTITY OF COMMON AND LABRADOR WHITEFISH. 



The common whitefish of the Great Lakes was first very imperfectly described by Dr. 

 Samuel L. Mitchill, in The American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review, for March, 1818. 

 The description, in fact, is so unsatisfactory that his contemporaries and later ichthyologists for 

 more than fifty years supposed it to refer to the cisco, or lake herring, Argyrosomus arledi. 



