Oct. 28, 1905 ] 
waters this year than for more than five years back. The 
increase is attributed by persons making reports to the 
great reduction in number of giggers and netters through 
the enforcement of the fisli laws. All other forms of fish- 
ing also reported to be better than for years past. 
VV. E. Meehan, 
Commissioner of FishefieSi 
Fish and Fishing. 
The ^'Salmon’' of the Upper Ottawa Lakes. 
A FRIEND writes me about a fishing trip recently made 
by him to one of the lakes near Eaganville, in the Ottawa 
district of Canada, and says that he was led to go there 
by the reports of the splendid salmon fishing to be had 
thereabouts. I know very well that salmon fishing is adT 
vertised in some of the waters in that part of the country, 
and that there are many good catches made there of 
beautiful game fishes that are known as salmon to the 
people of the locality. These fishes are no more, .how- 
ever, like Salmo solar, or the salmon of the _sea_ and 
coastal streams than this latter mentioned fish is like a 
rainbow trout. The matter is entirely one of names; and 
of all the difficulties that the ordinary angler-naturalist 
has to contend with, none are at times more perplexing 
than those arisin.g from the confusion caused by local no- 
menclature in the identification and classification of 
fishes. The mystification and muddle resulting therefrom 
was the subject some time ago of a very interesting paper 
on “The Vernacular Names of Fishes,” by the learned 
Prof. E. E. Prince, Dominion Commissioner of Fisheries. 
The fish that my friend caught the other day in Lake 
Clear were specimens of the namaycush or great gray or 
lake trout, and his guides classed them as salmon. In 
portions of the country along the Mississippi .River, 
where the pike-perch is found, it is dignified by the iiame 
of jack salmon, while in parts of Pennsylvania it _ is 
known as the Susauehanna salmon. In parts of Maine 
the ouananiche is locally known as salmon. So that the 
guides at the Rideau and other Ottawa lakes are far from 
being the only sinners in this respect. It is well known 
that black bass are called trout in some of the Southern 
States, and the confusion caused by the misapplication of 
the terms pickerel and pike is often experienced by 
‘ anglers. 
But to return to the namaycush, or so-called salmon, 
recently caught by my friend a few miles from Eagan- 
ville, which is reached about eighty miles from Ottawa 
‘ by the Canada Atlantic Railway. I am told, that the fish- 
- ing there has not been quite so good this autumn as 
I usual, because- of the very unusually fine and warm 
; weather which has prevailed. That of the early part of 
October was really as fine as the first half of September 
usually is. The big lake trout consequently remained 
down in their summer deep-water habitat, though a few 
were tempted by deep-water trolling, and if the attempt 
had been made a fortnight later, I have no doubt that 
these big fish could have been had in much shallower 
water. My informant killed two in one afternoon that 
weighed 7 pounds and spj respectively.. I cannot help 
thinking what rare sport it must be trolling imthe month"' 
of October for these namaycush in lakes like Temagami 
and Lady 'Evelyn, when the -fish move up from the great 
depths of the lakes into comparatively shallow water, as 
the heat grows less oppressive. 
The Salmon and Troet of Hudson Bay. 
The Dominion steamer Arctic, which has been absent 
for the last "year in the Arctic regions, enabling the 
mounted police to establish more northerly posts and 
customs offices, has returned to Quebec, where Major 
Moodie forwarded his reports of observations in the Far 
North. He reports brook trout plentiful in all the waters 
on the west side of Hudson Bay, and declares that in one 
place the natives -were catching them up to 7 and 8 
pounds each. In the direction of Hudson Straits, a good 
harbor, called Prefontaine Bay, after the Canadian Min- 
ister of Marine and Fisheries, was found forty miles to 
the west of Cape Westenholme, where a police depot was 
established, which will be one of the Dominion’s most 
northerly outposts. This harbor abounds with salmon to 
such an extent that one cast of a net filled two barrels 
for the expedition. The fish -weighed from 7 to 8 pounds 
each. The major offers no opinion as to the exact classi- 
fication of this fish, but its size would seem to indicate 
that it is more likely to be the Salmo hearnei of Richard- 
son, or the immaculatus or hudsonicus of Storer and 
Gunther respectively — commonly known as sea trout in 
Trinity Bay and elsewhere on the north shore of the Gulf 
— and as stagnalis in Greenland, than the well known 
Salmo salar. There is evidently much more to be learned 
of the Salmonidce of the Arctic regions than many of us 
imagine who have never had the opportunities for ob- 
servation possessed by Franklin, Richardson, Hearn, 
Back, Hallock and a few others. 
The Lake St. John Salmon. 
I have had very little difficulty in tracing up satisfac- 
tor3" evidence of the taking of quite a number of salmon 
in Lake St. John waters ‘during the past summer. Iso- 
lated cases of the capture of supposed salmon by anglers 
have been reported for the last three or four years, but 
never before this season have so many or such large spe- 
cimens of the fish been taken there. One salmon of 15 
pounds was caught in a net in Lake St. John itself. One 
of 18 pounds was caught by a boy in the Peribonca River, 
and, strange to say, was caught with bait. Of course 
there is nothing unusual in the taking of Salmo salar 
with bait in Scotch, Irish and English waters, and it, 
seems strange at first sight that the same fish should not 
oftener be similarly taken on this side of the water. 
Nevertheless the fact remains that it very seldom is s’o-. 
taken;. so seldom, in fact, that it is po.pularly suppos:ed^ 
that it is not possible to do so. Of course, the British 
rivers are all of them very short as compared with oiws, 
and -while some Amicri'can Salmon' may be several days in 
brackish water before reaching their river, it is not much 
more than a step, so to sa>', for a British fish to. pass from 
the sea into fresh water, and he may well be still on the., 
feed for a few hours, or even days, after his arrival in 
fhe river. 
It is ^ a very pretty problem, too, whether the big sal- . 
i FOREST AND STREAM. 387 
mon caught in Lake St. John waters ever went to sea at 
all. It is now seven years since the first of these salmon 
were planted in Lake St. John, and since that time, not 
only the firstvyear’s plant, but also the second and even 
the third: may .w.ell have attained the size mentioned if 
they went down to the sea as smolts and returned again 
■j::PS. grilse,.. If they: .remained in Lake St. John through- 
- ou<t -the year it is a question whether they -would ever 
hgve-, grown to be 18 pounds in weight, although there 
are not w.anting those who believe that the salmon form- 
erly found in . Lake Ontario, remained there all the year 
■round. There is. certainly an abundance of food for the 
fish, > in the shape of smelt and other white fish in Lake 
.St. . John ; - so that providing the salmon remain there, 
it: is not .surprising that they should be taken with bait, 
as, thej- must eat to live, whether they go down to the 
sea for the purpose, or spend both winter and summer in 
the lake. . 
A large number of smaller salmon have been taken 
during the season in these waters on the fly. Near the 
head of the Grand Discharge in Lake St. John, and also 
in the pools of the .Metabetchouan, quite a number were 
hooked, and while all which were recognized as salmon 
when caught were at once returned to the water unin- 
jured, on account of their immature size, several were 
killed by visiting anglers who were not aware of what 
they had captured, so slight is the difference in the ap ■ 
pearance of the 2 and 3-pound salmon and a ouananiche 
of similar size. 
- The success, so far, of the salmon plant in Lake St. 
John, gives promise of such excellent results in the near 
future that it has been decided to hatch out no. ouananiche 
this winter in the Roberval hatchery, but to utilize the 
institution to its utmost capacity — or at least, so far as 
the, eggs can be obtained— to the hatching of salmon. 
This can the more reasonably be done, since there has 
already been a very noticeable increase in the ouananiche 
supply in the Grand Discharge since the hatchery went 
into operation. 
The season just closed did not end very well for 
ouananiche. fishermen, because of the extreme dryness of 
the months of July and August. When September came 
round the water in Lake St. John was unprecedentedly 
low ; so much so in fact that the steamer could no longer 
reach the wharf at the Grand Discharge. The fish could 
-he seen in enormous quantities but would not rise. 
E. T. D. Chambers. 
An Angler^s Watch. 
'Our old-time sponsor, Mr. Charles Hallock, begs to 
acknowdedge through the columns of Forest and 
Stream the receipt of a beautiful timekeeper from Mr. 
George E. Hart, superintendent of the Waterbury Watch 
Company. It is a unique specimen of a .watch, and really 
constitutes one of a -series of original designs which this 
enthusiastic salmon fisher has been pleased to devise and 
present from time to time to prominent anglers who are 
familiar with Canadian streams. One went, of course, to 
President . Roosevelt, bearing the enameled picture of a 
Western ranch, another to ex-Governor Russell, of 
Massachusetts, with the picture of a camp scene on the 
case;, a third to Walter M. Brackett, the artist, with the 
appropriate figure of a salmon ; another to Mr. E. T. D. 
Chambers,' the design being a ouananiche; and one or 
two others to other well known anglers. But Mr. Hal- 
lock’s : is quite as suggestive, and perhaps even more 
unique, for its insignia is a couple of gaudy trout flies 
done in enamel and tied to silkworm gut lengths, which 
are so disposed as t.> form the outline of a heart. The 
ideas jre all. original with the superintendent, and apply 
to members of the craft only, none being made for the 
trade. 
Mr. Hart was one of the first subscribers to- Forest 
'AND Stream in 1873, and has kept up a long-distance 
acquaintance with Mr. Hallock at intervals ever since. 
In presenting this watch to Mr. Hallock’s notice and ad- 
miration, he has seen fit to introduce the gift by an au- 
thenticated recital of old-time reminiscences, which in- 
clude a ttvo and one-half hours’ tussle with a 3ip2-pound 
salmon. During its perusal Mr. Hallock claims to have 
wound the watch twice, intimating thereby that one good 
turn deserves another, if not m'ore. As a return com- 
pliment it was his delight to present Mr. Hart with a 
sixteen-inch photograph of Bartlett’s, at the outlet of 
■Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks, as it appeared forty 
years ago before the fire. Mr. Hart having been intimate 
•with the place and the people of the vicinity at that 
period. ■ 
Hair Lines. 
Blenkhorn, who wrote of hair lines in our issue of 
■Sept. 16, is requested to send his address to this office. 
— — 
The Transmission of Acquirements 
.Darwin — “Animals and Plants Under Domestication.” G. Archdall 
Reid, M.B., F.R.S.E. — “The Principles of Heredity.” 
In resuming this subject, it may be well to recapitu- 
late the difference between an inborn trait and an 
acquired character. Inborn traits are those which take 
their origin in the germ cell. Thus arms, legs, eyes, 
ears, etc., are all inborn. An acquired character (tech- 
nically termed modification) is an alteration impressed 
on an inborn character by influences acting on that 
character after it has developed from the germ. Thus, 
a hand is inborn, but if it be altered in any way, as by 
use or injury, the alteration is an acquirement. 
Maternal impressions and telegony (the impress sup- 
posed to be left by a former mate) are s.upposed to 
supply evidence in favor of the transmissibility of 
acquirements. A pregnant female sees a deformity or 
'something else which po'werfully impresses' her. Her 
child when born is thought to reproduce the deformity. 
Thus a Kerry cow chased by a bulldog is said to have 
borne a calf extremely like her persecutor. Telegony 
■is a phenomenon of much the same order. A mother 
who has born’e o'Aspwng to one sire, k supposed to so 
influence offspring borne to subsequent sires, that the 
latter reproduce the peculiarities of her first mate; thus 
a white woman who has borne a child to a negro is 
supposed ever after to have dark children to white men; 
a mare who has borne a foal to a quagga, is said to 
have borne subsequently striped offspring to a thor- 
oughbred horse. In the one case, the mother’s mind is 
thought to be impressed, in the other her body. Both 
hypotheses furnish examples of the amazing looseness 
of thought which occasionally prevails in biological 
writing. Neither the transmission of maternal im- 
pressions nor telegony has stood the test of accurate 
observation; they are popular superstitions. But_ if 
they were proved to be true, even then the transmission 
of acquirements would not have been proved, for by 
that we mean that the precise thing the parent acquired, 
or something very like it, is transmitted to offspring; 
but a mother who gets a mental impression does not 
transmit that impression to her child; on the contrary, 
the child is supposed to develop something quite dif- 
ferent, a deformity. So also if a white mother of a 
half-breed bear dark children to a white father, she 
would not transmit anything she acquired, for inter- 
course with a negro does not make her black. 
- The effects of various diseases are supposed to supply 
evidence of the transmission of acquirements. Gout is 
mentioned as a case. The sins of the father are thought 
to be visited on his children. Here, predisposition, 
tendency, an inborn trait, is confused with disease, an 
acquirement. Some men are so constituted that .under 
fit conditions they tend to develop gout; the children 
inherit the inborn trait, the predisposition, and under 
like conditions tend in turn to develop the same dis- 
ease. But there is no evidence that parental high liv- 
ing influences in the slightest degree the liability of the 
child to gout, nor even that generations of high living 
tend to produce gouty predisposition in a self-indulgent 
race. The ' children of poor Irish peasants, when _ re- 
moved from their normally miserable surroundings into 
a more comfortable environment, are as liable to gout 
as the scions of the British aristocracy._ In fact, 
iudging by the analogy of other diseases, it is probable 
that, were gout very prevalent, and a considerable cause 
of death or serious disablement, the race that was most 
afflicted by it, would, by the weeding out of the unfit, 
become in time the most resistant to it, the least liable 
under given conditions to contract it. The supporters 
of the transmission of acquirements contend that the 
effects of use and disuse, which are acquired by every 
individual during thousands of years, and -which may 
profoundly affect the whole body, tend ultimately to 
become organized into inborn characters; the word 
organized being a vague word used to indicate a par- 
ticular and inexplicable change in the germ plasm. 
Thus hares are supposed to have become swift because 
their ancestors practiced swift running. The giraffe is 
supposed to ha-v'e a long neck because its ancestors 
stretched upward for food. The elephant is supposed 
to have a short neck and long proboscis because its 
ancestors stretched their upper lips rather than their 
necks. Similarly the snake is supposed to have lost its 
limbs throu.gh the transmitted effect of disease. 
But modifications acquired as a result of use apd 
disuse are clearly never transmitted. Thus an infant’s 
limb never attains to the adult standard except in 
response to stimulation similar to that which developed 
the parent’s limb. -The same is true of all other struc- 
tures which in the parent underwent development as a 
result of use. These, like the limbs, do not develop- in 
the infant except as a result of similar causes.^ Plainly, 
then, that which is transmitted to the. infant is not the 
modification, but only the power of acquiring the modi- 
fication under similar circumstances. Were use ac- 
quirements transmitted, a child, for example, would 
grow into the possession of full adult size and power 
in the total absence .of all exercise. We know that it 
cannot do so. 
Acquired immunity from disease has been instanced 
as an acquirement capable of hereditary transmission. 
It is not so. Acquired immunity against any disease 
depends essentially on a gradual habituation to its 
toxins or poisons and increased power of resistance to 
them. Evolution by the agency of natural selection is 
undoubtedly the true doctrine. There is no evidence 
that any race has undergone degeneration through the 
action of any disease, nor that the acquirement of im- 
munity during any number of generations has resulted 
in an evolution of inborn immunity. On the contrary, 
every race that has been exposed to a death-dealing 
disease is resistant to that particular disease precisely 
in proportion to its past experience _ of it. When the 
disease is one against which immunity cannot be ac- 
quired, the race has undergone an evolution of inborn 
immunity; thus Europeans, who have suffered_ se-verely 
from tuberculosis for thousands of years, resist infec- 
tion by it, or when infected, recover from it more easily 
than African negroes, who have suffered less, and much 
more easily than American Indians, who until lately 
had no experience of the disease. When the disease is 
one against which immunity can be acquired, the race 
has undergone an evolution of the power of acquiring 
immunity, never of inborn immunity; thus English 
children, whose race has long been afflicted by measles 
and whooping cough, contract those maladies as easily 
as Polynesians, to whom they were familiarized only 
during the last century. But, whereas, as a rule, Eng- 
lish children recover readily, Polynesians perish in 
great numbers. When the disease is not of a fatal kind, 
no effect on the race can be observed. Thus Poly- 
nesians are infected as easily and recover as easily, but 
not more nor less easily than Englishmen from chicken- 
pox, Man’s evolution against malaria is more striking 
and conspicuous than that occasioned by any other 
disease, and that for two reasons. First, because in 
many districts infected by its microbes, it is so prevalent 
and virulent that no. man. resident in them escapes in- 
fection, unless he is immune, nor death unless he is 
resistant. The elimination of the unfit, therefore, has 
been thorough, and presumably it has been very pro- 
longed, since in such districts the inhabitants, ho-wever 
much they have warred among themselves, have dwelt 
secure, protected by their deadly climate from the fate 
that has befallen so many aboriginal tribes — extermina- 
tion by immigrant hordes^ Those races thrat have hatj 
