WHITE TROUT. 
45 
Dr. Quackenbos states ( 1 . c.) that in the two years following 1881, a sufficient number 
were taken to excite comment. In October, 1885, Col. Elliott Hodge, then State Fish and 
Game Commissioner of New Hampshire, had his attention called to the fish, accidentally dis- 
covered in vast numbers on a “mid-lake rocky shoal.” He wrote to Dr. Quackenbos: “ I can 
show you an acre of these trout, hundreds of which will weigh from 3 to 8 pounds each. I could 
never have believed such a sight possible in New Hampshire.” 
Thus it appears that three years after the first lot of Bluebacks was planted specimens were 
taken weighing 2 and 3 pounds and still more and larger ones in the next few years. In five or 
six years at most they occurred in prodigious numbers “hundreds of which would weigh from 3 
to 8 pounds each.” 
Taking into consideration the probable abundance of food in the form of smelts, it would 
not be surprising that in six years the fish might attain six pounds or more in weight, allowing 
an average increase of one pound to the year, which is a stated estimate for the Common Trout 
under favorable conditions. But when the abundance of predaceous fishes like the Common 
Trout, Land-locked Salmon, Perch, and others is taken into consideration, it might be doubted 
that in that length of time such a multiplication of the species would result from such a small 
plant as 7,000, even under the most favorable of other conditions, especially when the extinc- 
tion of the Blueback in the Rangeley Lakes, as has been pointed out, is doubtless due to Land- 
locked Salmon. 
The Rangeley Blueback has been planted in various other lakes of Maine and New Hamp- 
shire where the conditions were apparently fully as favorable for it as in Sunapee Lake, and none 
has since been reported. This, however, does not prove that Sunapee is not an exception, but is 
collateral evidence. Furthermore, the same White Trout has been discovered in other New 
Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont waters where no red, white, or blue trout has ev^er been planted 
and where they could not gain access from their native waters save through the instrumentality 
of man; and it is not impossible that it may yet be found in waters where it is not at present 
recognized. The later discoveries just referred to do not prove that the Sunapee White Trout did 
not result from the Blueback introduction but it is also evidence to the contrary showing that it 
is not necessary to account for its presence in Sunapee Lake by man s intervention. There is 
no record of the introduction of any other fish than the Blueback which could possibly account 
for its presence. It has been absolutely proved that none of the products of European Saibling 
eggs ever reached Sunapee Lake. If not a Blueback or a Saibling and not indigenous, where did 
it come from? 
The fact that it was “never observed” prior to this time may be a matter of not recognizing 
it as distinct from the Common Trout or as Dr. Quackenbos suggests ( 1 . c.), in the ignorance of 
the few who in old times may ever have seen it, and who cared for nothing beyond the fact that 
it was good to eat.” 
