salmonoidejE. 145 



when ready to spawn. The scales of this trout are small, the colours peculiar, and there is 

 merely a tuft of fine teeth on the forepart of the vomer, the rest of that bone being perfectly 

 smooth. I owe the specimen to the kindness of J. L. Wynn, Esq., of Coed Coch, in Denbigh- 

 shire. The Tarrogan from Loch Borley, in Sutherlandshire, has a deeper body and larger 

 scales than the Welsh Torgoch, but the want of good specimens has prevented me from insti- 

 tuting a fair comparison between the two. They agree in dentition, and differ from the pre- 

 ceding trouts in the scales being less crowded, and in many parts of the body not tiled but 

 simply in contact. 



The want of a sufficient number of specimens of the Par, and of some other Scottish trouts, 

 causes me to pass them over without further notice *. 



[61.] 1. Salmo salar. (Auctorum.) The Common salmon. 



Family, Salmones (Salmonoideae), Cuvibr. (Salmonacei, Nilsson.) 



Salmon abound in the rivers of Labrador, Canada, Newfoundland t, Nova 

 Scotia, the New England States, and in the waters of New York which fall into the 

 St, Lawrence. Previous to the colonization of America, they appear to have 

 ranged more to the south on the Atlantic coast than they do at present. The cele- 

 brated but unfortunate Hudson says, that on the 14th of September, 1609, while 

 sailing up the magnificent river which bears his name, he saw " great store of 

 salmons ; ? ' but in recent times even a solitary salmon has rarely been known to 

 stray thither, and the most southern stream on that coast which this fish now fre- 

 quents, is Connecticut river, in latitude 41^° N J. Even there, however, it is 

 becoming daily more scarce, the erection of weirs, milldams, and other obstacles to 

 its ascent in the spawning season, having impeded its reproduction, and the New 

 York market is now supplied with salmon from Kennebec river in the state of 

 Maine. The salmon ascends the St. Lawrence and its tributaries as high as Lake 



* Sir William Jardine has published an interesting paper on the Sutherlandshire trouts in the New Edinburgh Philo- 

 sophical Journal, which I did not see until the preceding observations on the Salmonoideae had mostly gone to the press. 

 He gives the following as the most convenient distinguishing marks of the Par, or Salmo salmuhts, Ray : — " The great 

 size of the pectoral fins, the shortness of the maxillary bone, and consequent diminutive gape, and the breadth between 

 the rami of the lower jaw." In Pennant's British Zoology (8vo. ed., 1812), the figure in pi. 70, judging from the con- 

 figurations of the markings and general habit, is that of a young salmon, while the lower figure, in pi. 87, is the true Par. 



| The earliest account we have of Cabot's discovery of this island in 1497 (recorded on Adams's map) mentions salmon 

 among its natural productions. Hakluyt, iii., p. 6. 



I " White salmons," noticed by Smith in his account of Virginia, and by subsequent writers, as abounding in the creeks 

 of Pennsylvania, are evidently the Labre salmo'ide of Lacepede, or Grystes salmo'ides of Cuvier, a percoid fish, which we 

 have already alluded to in p. 31. It is called " trout " by the inhabitants of Carolina and the neighbouring states. 



U 



