198 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 



buoyed up above by thin oblong pieces of fir, and loaded below with stones, is drawn 

 beneath the ice by means of the line, and firmly fixed at each end to stakes thrust 

 through the holes. After the first time the intermediate holes in the ice, being 

 useless, are allowed to freeze up, but the extreme ones are opened daily, and the 

 net examined by the fisherman, who draAvs it out at one hole, while his assistant 

 veers away the line at the other. A careful fisherman changes the net every second 

 or third day, for the purpose of drying and repairing it. Occasionally two or more 

 nets are attached to each other, and set in the same way as a single one. As the 

 ice in the fur countries varies from three to six feet in thickness, the labour of set- 

 ting a net is considerable, and when the cold is severe, even the re-opening of the 

 holes occupies much time. Most of the fish enter the net by night. They freeze 

 as they are taken from the water, and are thus preserved in a perfectly sound state 

 until spring ; but the newly-taken fish are superior in flavour to European palates. 

 The Copper Indians strike the fish through holes cut in the ice, using a very 

 ingenious fish-gig, constructed of rein-deer horns, on the same principle, but supe- 

 rior in its effect, to the " stong" with which eels are commonly taken in Lincoln- 

 shire. 



The Attihawmeg differs from the other known coregoni in the extraordinary 

 thickness of its stomach, which resembles the gizzard of a fowl. Baron Cuvier 

 having examined my Lake Huron specimens, returned them ticketed, " Coregone 

 voisin de le Palee de Lac de Geneve." The sub-genus Coregonus is characterised 

 in the Regne Animal as having a mouth like the Graylings, but less perfectly armed, 

 being often entirely destitute of teeth. The scales are large and the dorsal is not 

 so long as it is high anteriorly. The C oocyrhinchus is distinguished from other 

 European species by a soft prominence on the tip of its snout, and the C. marcenula 

 by the lower jaw projecting beyond the upper one, agreeing in that character with 

 the Salmo clupeoides of Pallas : the rest have the snout blunt as if truncated, like 

 that of the Attihawmeg and most of the American coregoni. 



DESCRIPTION 

 Of a specimen taken in Lake Huron. 



Form. — Profile ovate, more or less gibbous before the dorsal fin, with a slightly-tapering 

 tail inclining a little upwards. The greatest depth of a well-grown Attihawmeg is between a 

 third and a fourth of its length, excluding the caudal, but when very fat the depth is greater *. 

 The body is compressed, the transverse diameter being considerably less than the vertical one. 



* In an Attihawmeg of the ordinary size, taken in Pine Island Lake, the depth of the body was to the length of the fish, 

 exclusive of the caudal, as five to seventeen. 







