IO 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
Leucichthys sisco (Jordan). Cisco of Lake Tippecanoe. 
Argyrosomus sisco Jordan, Amer. Nat. 1875, p. 135, Lake Tippecanoe at Warsaw, Ind.; collector, J. H. Carpenter: 
Rept. Geol. Survey Indiana, 1876, p. 4, with a crude figure, Lake Tippecanoe, Lake Geneva. 
Argyrosomus artedi sisco, Jordan & Evermann, Eishes North and Mid. Amer., pt. 1, 1898, p. 469, and elsewhere. 
Habitat: Small glacial lakes of northern Indiana and southern Wisconsin formerly tributary to 
Lake Michigan (lakes Tippecanoe, Barber, Shriner, James, Oconomowoc, Green, La Belle, etc.). 
Comparison of the Lake Michigan herring with the “sisco” of Lake Tippecanoe convinces us that 
no specific difference can be made out by which the two can be separated. 
The cisco of Lake Tippecanoe is merely a landlocked form of the ordinary Michigan herring, smaller, 
softer in flesh, and more plump, but showing no technical differences whatever. This was the judgment 
of Jordan & Evermann in 1898, but we then made the mistake of supposing the Lake Michigan species 
to be the true artedi. If the common Michigan herring is to receive a distinctive name, it may be pro- 
visionally called Leucichthys sisco huronius. As a matter of fact, however, sisco is the variety and 
in strictness each separate lake has its own variety of “cisco,” as such changes as the form has under- 
gone since post glacial times must have taken place separately in each of the several lakes in which the 
Fig. 5. — Leucichtkys sisco ( Jordan). Cisco of Lake Tippecanoe. (Drawn from specimen 9 inches 
long, collected in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.) 
cisco is left. As a whole this species differs little from L. harengus except in the larger adipose fin, 
which is, however, subject to considerable variations. In general it is longer than the eye and is con- 
tained 3.5 times in the distance from the depressed tip of the dorsal to its base. On the whole harengus 
is the more slender fish and paler in color. Ultimately ontariensis and sisco, with possibly the deep 
water supernas, may be regarded as subspecies of harengus. 
The name Argyrosomus sisco was applied in 1875 to the cisco of Lake Tippecanoe, a small lake 
herring, inhabiting the depths of the glacial lakes in northern Indiana and southern Wisconsin, formerly 
tributary to Lake Michigan. These fishes are known to occur in lakes Tippecanoe, Barber, Crooked, 
Shriner, Twin, Cedar and James in northern Indiana, and in lakes Geneva, Oconomowoc, and La Belle 
in Wisconsin. If these are relics of an earlier fauna, as is probable, the cisco in Indiana and the 
cisco of Wisconsin must have been separately derived from a common ancestor of which huronius is 
the direct descendant, and from which neither has obviously changed. The name sisco applied to 
the first species of fish described by the present senior writer is much older than that of huronius, 
and as elsewhere stated, the common lake form must stand as the subspecies if the two are separated. 
We do not know the origin of the word “cisco” nor do we know whether it is related to “siscowet.” 
We now adopt the current spelling of “cisco” instead of “sisco,” the form under which the cisco of 
Lake Tippecanoe first became known to us. The following is the substance of the original description 
of the type of A. sisco from Lake Tippecanoe: 
Head 4.33 to 5 in length; depth 4.1 (4 to 4.25); eye 3.6 in head; maxillaries 3.33 in head, not 
reaching center of eye; length of mandible 2.125 i n head, much more than least depth of tail; scales 
84; dorsal 9 or 10; pectoral 15; ventral 12; anal 12. Form regular, spindle-shaped, slightly elevated 
at beginning of the dorsal, the form essentially as in the common Lake Michigan herring. Lower jaw 
the longer; distance from occiput to snout 2.33 in distance from occiput to dorsal; depth at occiput 
