246 Field and Forest Rambles. 



appearances equals the C, albus of Richardson, and is not 

 distinct from C. sapidissimus of Agassiz, — thus, perhaps, being 

 identical with the far-famed attihawmeg of the Cree Indians. 

 The gizzard-like construction of the stomach, the walls of 

 which in many specimens I examined were fully three- 

 quarters of an inch in thickness, is said by the author of 

 the " Fauna Boreali Americana " to be distinctive of the last- 

 named species. 



Although it is stated that it feeds on shells and small fishes, I 

 have most frequently found insects, larvae, and vegetable fibre 

 in its stomach ; and the tongue, which Agassiz states to be 

 smooth in C. sapidissimus of Lake Superior, is covered with 

 minute conical teeth in the denizens of St. John River. It 

 is truly a delicious article of food, and seems never to 

 pall on the appetite of even those dependent on it for 

 their entire subsistence. The distribution of the coregoni* 

 as regards New Brunswick, is very much like that of the 

 smelt, there being a set that cannot possibly leave the fresh 

 water, and another which goes and returns regularly. With 

 reference to the former, exactly the same obtains as with 

 other land-locked salmonoids ; there is a season of the year 

 (summer in this case) when the fish retires to the profound 

 depths of lakes, where it remains unobserved until autumn, 

 and then repairs to shallows, where numbers are captured. We 

 might suppose that the fish was originally a resident fresh- 

 water species restricted to the great inland lake basins, and 

 shut off from the sea by insurmountable barriers, such as 

 that which isolates the great lakes at the sources of the St. 

 John River, and, as Perley remarks, a few may have acci- 

 dentally been conveyed over the Grand Falls* I have not 

 seen individuals from the former situation ; and whilst allow- 

 ing that they may be distinct (perhaps two or more species), 

 from a close scrutiny of the sea-going sort, there cannot, to 

 my mind, be a question but that it is identical with the 



Op. cit., p. 205. 



