HOW THE TROUT CAME TO CALIFORNIA. 



David Starr Jordan, LL.D. 



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he ultimate result of centuries 

 on centuries of the restless- 

 ness of individuals is seen in 

 the facts of geographical distribution. 

 Only in the most general way can the 

 history of any species be traced ; but 

 could we know it all, it would be as 

 long and as eventful a story as the his- 

 tory ot the colonization and settle- 

 ment of North America by immigrants 

 from Europe. By the fishes each river 

 in America has been a hundred times 

 discovered, its colonization a hundred 

 times attempted. In these efforts, there 

 is no co-operation. Every individual is 

 for himself. Every struggle is a strug- 

 gle of life and death. Each fish is a 



California. The trout is in California 

 now. It is everywhere in California. 

 There is no brook so poor that a trout 

 cannot somewhere or sometime find a 

 place in it. Even the driest Arroyo 

 Seco has at its head somewhere a living 

 spring, and here the trout remains until 

 the winter rains release him. The trout 

 was not always in California, and at 

 some time or other it came to California 

 from the far northwest. All this we 

 know very well. We know it as well as 

 we know that the sonorous Spanish 

 names came to California from the 

 south, or that Saxon enterprise came 

 over the plains, across the isthmus and 

 around the Horn. 



brook trout. — Salvelinus Fontinallis. 



cannibal and to each species each mem- 

 ber of every other species is an alien 

 and as avage." (Science Sketches, p. 132.) 

 In the light of this statement we may 

 try to find out how the trout* came to 



* I here use the word trout as it is used in England 

 for the black-spotted fishes of the genus Sa/mo, which 

 retain the teeth on the shaft of the vomer, and which in- 

 habit the streams and lakes of regions where water is 

 cold and clear. I distinguish the trout from the 

 marine and anadromous salmon on the one hand and 

 from the fine-scaled, red-spotted . charr (salvelinus) on 

 the other. If our pilgrim fathers had sailed from 

 Cumberland or Westmoreland, instead of from Devon- 

 shire, they would never have called the beautiful red- 

 spotted charr of our New England streams a " trout." 

 They had never seen a charr in the south of England 

 and had probably never even heard the name. Trout 

 and salmon they knew well and the names they gave 

 to the fishes of the new world that seemed nearest like 

 them. There is no genuine trout in America east of 

 the Great Plains. The eastern brook trout or speckled 

 trout is a charr. No higher praise can be given to a 

 salmonoid than to call it a charr. 



The records of the trout are less 

 perfect than the stories of the Argo- 

 nauts or the annals of the Mission 

 Fathers ; but some records there are 

 and whatever these records tell is true 

 so far as it goes. Let us piece these 

 records out joining their facts by lines 

 of least resistance. Let us frame a 

 history of what may have been true, 

 and it will remain true until some one 

 can read the records better. 



The trout was born in Europe on 

 the flanks of the glacial mountains. 

 The salmon was its parent. The en- 

 vironment of land-locked lakes and 

 glacial streams determined its character. 

 From northern Fjords and mossy brooks 



