244 Field and Forest Rambles. 



As soon as the ice breaks up and drifts seaward, sculls 

 upon sculls of this savoury fish push their ways up the rivers, 

 where they bite bait readily, and are captured by nets. 

 Again, at the same season the individuals of the land- 

 locked lakes, impelled by the same instinct as the others, 

 issue from the deeper waters, and crowd many brooks and 

 streams so densely that the struggling mass is often lifted 

 out of water by sheer pressure from below and behind ; 

 indeed, so plentiful are they then in the brooks running 

 into Lake Utopia, before noticed, that I have been told by 

 persons who had captured them by thousands, that there 

 is no difficulty in filling a landing net at every haul. As just 

 observed, the smelt is a favourite prey of the great spotted 

 lake trout, which, with the brook trout, pursues them during 

 winter, the former chasing the sculls to the influent waters, 

 whilst the latter follows them up stream. The smelt is heavy 

 in spawn in spring, but I have frequently obtained individuals 

 in this state in midwinter from the sea coast; and in the large 

 river estuaries on the Gulf of the St. Lawrence enormous quan- 

 tities are captured in January in the same state. Whether the 

 roe is retained in these smelts until the rivers open, or whether 

 there is one set which deposit their spawn in the sea and another 

 which deposit it in the rivers, is not apparent ; at all events, 

 the same crowding together takes place in salt as in fresh 

 water. I observed in the St. John River that the first 

 captured in April and May were females, and most probably 

 they precede the males to the spawning-ground, as is seem- 

 ingly the case with other fishes, and notably so with the togue 

 and other lake trouts, as I have been told by raftsmen and 

 others who have watched them ; moreover, I have frequently 

 supposed that the desperate scrambling which takes place in 

 the brooks when the former is pushing up to spawn may be 

 in part, if not altogether, caused by the combined excite- 

 ment of both sexes in their desperate efforts to reach their 

 goal. 



