Spawning Season of the Togue. 243 



rendered famous whatever localities the apparitions were said 

 to frequent. 



Raftsmen accustomed to pass along Grand Lake assured 

 me that they had often seen a shoal of togues depositing their 

 spawn, and surrounded by thousands of eels, hornpouts, dace, 

 etc., which assemble to feed on the ova; moreover, that neither 

 the males nor the females remain beyond a few days on 

 the ground. Sometimes the roe is deposited between stones, 

 where the males may be observed fertilizing it. At this 

 season the Indian plies his spear unmercifully, killing hun- 

 dreds and wounding more. The flesh varies in colour, from 

 orange to cream colour — according, I imagine, to the season 

 of the year. As an article of food it is very fat, with little 

 flavour, unless in the shape of " fish-cake well seasoned by 

 Harvey's sauce," when the fisherman's appetite will pronounce 

 it a delicacy, only surpassed a hundredfold by a broiled or fried 

 brook trout, or its congener the silvery salmon trout. 



The Smelt of the western Atlantic seaboard differs as- 

 suredly in several particulars from the European fish. More- 

 over, it may be that there are more than one species in the 

 former waters ; at all events, there is a set of smelts that never 

 go to sea, and another that comes up the rivers merely to 

 spawn, and returns to the ocean. Perhaps, like the brook 

 trout and the white fish, it can live altogether in fresh water. 

 I carefully compared many specimens from land-locked lakes, 

 open rivers, and the sea, but could not discover any dis- 

 tinctions, all agreeing with the O. viridescens of Lesueur, and 

 O. operlanus of Artedi,* the fin rays being, D, 10-11; P, 

 12-14; V, 8-9; A, 16 (will stand 17 if the last ray, which 

 is cleft, is counted). The teeth and gill rays are absolutely 

 the same as in the above ; it has sixty-two vertebrae.f 



* Dr. Gunthur {op. at., p. 167) also says that the American fish is 

 scarcely distinct from O. operlanus. 



\ I examined a female which had sixty-three, this single exception oc- 

 curring among eight to ten specimens examined. 



