CLINTON S LETTER ON THE FISHES OF NEW-YORK. 497 



often taken under the falls, where it inhabits the grass growing among the 

 rocks that are usually covered with spray. 



An intelligent gentleman, who has resided many years in the vicinity 

 of the lakes, estimates that there are one hundred and fifty species of 

 fishes in these waters : Admitting that this estimate is too high, yet it 

 shows the extensive range of inquiry which this subject opens. 



The principal fishes, on account of their number, delicacy, and size, 

 belong to the salmo, accipenser, perca, esox, and ciprinus genera. 



Father Hennepin, who ascended the Niagara river in 1698, states, 

 that there were fishes enough in that river, of different kinds, to supply 

 the greatest city of Europe. And the reason assigned by him is, that 

 they continually swim up from the sea toward the spring of the river, 

 for fresh water, and that the infinite number that take pleasure to come 

 and refresh themselves in those waters, continue there, because they are 

 stopped by the cataract. Notwithstanding these allurements, and the 

 almost universal spread of the salmon over all the western waters, below 

 the cataract of Niagara, it is not seen in the river of that name. 



Dr. Barton, in his able discourse on some of the principal desiderata 

 in natural history, &c. read before the Philadelphia Linnasan Society in 

 1807, asks, " What is the theory of the well-ascertained fact, that al- 

 though the salmons abound in Ontario, and in many of the waters which 

 empty into this great lake, they have never been known to penetrate up 

 the Niagara river, even as far as Q,ueenston, although there is nothing 

 to obstruct their passage, for near nine miles higher up the stream ? 

 Have they learned by a kind of tradition, that the cataract opposes an 

 insurmountable barrier to their migration beyond a certain distance ? Is 

 it the noise of the falls, propagated along the course of the Niagara 

 river, that deters the fish from moving upward ? Perhaps we shall dis- 

 cover the solution of the fact in a difference of the temperature of the 

 waters of the Ontario, and those of the Niagara river, or in some pecu- 



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