116 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March, 1922 
RAINBOW OR STEELHEAD 
E \’l^l\\' ani;ior fools (luitc suro that 
lio oaii loll a Rainhow trout from 
a Stoolhoacl, hut not all anglers 
make tho samo distiuotioiis. Some 
(lopoud u|)ou tho shai)c ()f the tail, others 
upon tho louifth of tho head or snout, 
others upon tho oolor of tho hody, w hile 
still others consider more dooi)ly-soatod 
oharaotors such as tho oolor or tho ilosh. 
v^oiuotiuios a loarnod judi;o on tho honoh 
admits tho ^■aluo of this last-moutiouod 
oharaotor and hands down the court’s 
\oialict accordingly, as was shown in a 
rooont case in a certain county in Cali- 
fornia. 
A man was arrested hy the State I'ish 
■ and (lame Commission and charged with 
ha\ing caught a Stoclhoad trout out of 
season. Ho was haled into court. 'I'hc 
fish ho had caught and w hich was found 
in his possession was produootl in court 
hy tho plaiiitil'f whoso o.\])ort identitiod 
it as a Stoclhoad. The defendant’s at- 
torney demiod that it was a Stoclhoad, 
and called his c.\pert who said: "It is 
a \cry easy matter to determine whether 
this fish is a Sto*clhead. The flesh or 
meat of the Stoclhoad is always green in 
oolor. If, ui)on cutting open this fish, 
we find that the meat is green, it is a 
Steclhead : if it is not green, it is not a 
Stcclhead. I will now out into this fish 
so as to c\])ose the llcsh and }-our lioiu)r 
can decide.” "It’s pink, higosh,” ex- 
claimed tho court. “There ain’t no green 
in it. It ain’t no Steclhead. The case is 
dismissed !” 
Pcrhajis the most perplexing (piestion 
discussed hy anglers is that concerning 
the distinctness or identit3^ of the Steel- 
head and Rainhow tront. The (luestjon 
has been a difficult one for ichthyologists 
as well. Are the}- two separate, dis- 
tinct, and perfectly good species? or arc 
they one and the same thing? Are rain- 
hows sini])ly those individuals of the spe- 
cies which have never gone down to the 
sea, hut have remained in the freshwater 
streams where they were hatched, and 
where they take on brighter colors? And 
arc Steelheads, hy the same token, merely 
those individuals that have the wander- 
lust and go dow n to the salt sea in which 
they li\o for a lime, growing large and 
taking on loss rich hut more sih’cry col- 
ors, and then, as the spawning time ap- 
proaches, return to the freshwater 
streams to deposit their, eggs? This is 
a question that has hoon discussed hy 
ichthyologists, anglers and fish-cnlturists 
for mail}' years, and oven yet not all arc 
agreed as to what the answer is. 
The Steclhead w’as originally described 
in 1836 hy Sir John Richardson in his 
great work "Fauna Boreali-Americana.” 
The specimen upon which he based his 
description came from the Columbia 
Ri\ er at Fort \kancou\'er. 1 fe named the 
supposed new species Saliiio (jairdneri in 
honor of Dr. Cairdner, the Hudson Bay 
Company’s physician at h'ort \hincouver, 
whom Richardson speaks t)f as "an able 
and promising young naturalist.” 
The original rainhow trout was de- 
scribed nineteen years later (March Id, 
1855) hy Dr. William P. tlihhons of 
San Francisco, one of the founders of 
the California vVeademy of Sciences. 
Dr. Cdhhons based his description on 
three small specimens each about five 
inches long and "evidently young fish ob- 
tained hy Mr. Nevins from the San 
Leandro Creek,” i)rohahly not far from 
the present village of San l.eandro, Ala- 
meda County. He called the supposed 
new s])ccies Satiiio iridca, which, trans- 
lated into Fnglish, gave the fish a ^■ery 
appropriate vernacular name, Rainhow 
Trout. 
Trout are known to occur in practi- 
cally all the small streams tributary to 
San Francisco Bay, and they all seem to 
he identical with the trout of San Lean- 
dro Creek, ^^•hieh is now known to he 
identical with the Steclhead of the Cali- 
fornia coast. A\'hcther this Steclhead is 
the same s])ecics as that of the Columbia 
Ri\ er, described by Richardson under the 
name Salmo gairdiicri, is not certain. It 
has always been assumed that they arc 
identical, hut it is oidy an assumption, 
as no direct comparison of adequate ma- 
terial has apparently ever been made. 
1 f thc>' are one and the same species, 
then the correct name of the Rainbow 
Trout of our coastal streams is Salmo 
(/ainlucri, that name ha\'ing priority over 
Salmo iridciis of Gibbons. 
But there arc other kinds of Rainbow 
Trout in California. Indeed, the Rain- 
how of fish-cnlturists and most anglers 
is not the little fish of our coastal streams 
hut the magnificent, brightly-colored 
species of the McCloud, which Dr. Jor- 
dan described in 1894 under the name 
Salmo sliashi. 
This species has considerably smaller 
scales than the .San Leandro fish, there 
being about 145 in the lateral line of the 
former, while in the' latter there are 
only about 130. 
The .Shasta 'Lrout is the Rainbow 
'I'rout of fish-cnlturists; it is the species 
Top and bottom views of left hind foot 
of fox squirrel having eight toes 
whieh has been most e.xtensively propa- 
gated and which, under the name "Rain- 
l)ow Trout,” has been most widely dis- 
tributed by .State and b'ederal agencies. 
It is the s])ecies most often caught by, 
and best known to the anglers. It is the 
Rainbow <)f the angler ami the fisli-cullii- 
rists, and it is entirely distinct from the 
Steclhead. 
Summing up the itiattcr, the following 
is probably a fair statement of the pres- 
ent views of the experts regarding the 
Steelhcad-Rainbow problem : 
1. If the Steclhead of the California 
coast is identical with the Steclhead of 
the Columbia River, its proper scientific 
name is Salmo gairdneri. 
2. The Steclhead of the California 
coast is identical with the Rainbow of 
the California coastal streams, and, if 
distinct from the Columbia Stcelbcacl (as 
I believe it is), it must bear the name 
given to it by Gibbons, Salmo iridciis. 
3. The Rainbow of fish-cnlturists and 
most anglers is the Shasta Rainbow, 
which is very distinct from the Steclhead. 
The anglers who visit our coastal 
streams, from Eel River on the north to 
the Ventura on the south, may continue 
to catch Steelheads, while those who go 
inland and fisii iiT the iqiper Sacramento 
and its tributaries will, it is hoped, con- 
tinue to fill their creels with the legal 
limit of the Shasta Rainbow which, para- 
phrazing good Dr. Henshall’s felicitou.s 
appraisement of the black bass, is, “inch 
for inch and pound for iionnd, the ganiest 
trout that swims.” 
B. W. Evermann, 
California. 
TWO FEET IN ONE 
W HILE hunting in Lawrence County, 
Indiana, recently, Ralph Meyncke 
of Tipton, Indiana, shot a fox-squirrcl 
whose left hind foot had eight perfect 
toes or two perfectly developed feet in 
one. 
The squirrel was normal in every other 
respect, except the one large foot. 
Often squirrels are caught which have 
an extra toe on each foot, hut a squirrel 
with two ])crfect feet on one leg is very 
unusual. Many old hunters who hunted 
in the days when squirrels were more nu- 
merous than they are to-day, say that 
they never saw a foot like this one. 
Mr. Meyncke noticed that when he 
shot the squirrel out of the tree, he came 
to earth on his feet and climbed tho 
nearest tree with unusual activity and 
gracefulness. Later, when cleaning the 
squirrel, the hunter believed it was this 
extra foot that aided him in his aerial 
stunts. 
Gketciien Dye, 
Indiana. 
