BROOK TROUT. 
79 
sistent with the facts. It has been thought to be caused from the fish subsisting upon certain 
kinds of food pigmented with red. This seems to be defective for other fishes feeding as exten- 
sively upon the same kinds of food always have white flesh. After taking everything into con- 
sideration, it seems probable that the food has no more to do with it than to fatten the fish and 
it is the intrinsic fat or oil in the fish which produces the red flesh and delicious flavor of the 
red-meated trout. The oil or fat is naturally red, as that of some other animal is naturally 
white or some other color, and it is the amount present in the fish that gives it its intensity. 
Young, rapidly growing fish, or fish with comparatively scarce food supply, are usually white- 
meated. The meat of well fed growing trout gradually becomes yellow and then “red” with 
increasing age and, inversely, the meat of breeding fish gradually, sometimes irregularly, 
becomes white with the advance of the season. 
Food. * 
The trout is carnivorous and almost omnivorous within carnous limits, levying upon nearly 
every class of animals, — worms, mollusks, crustaceans, insects, batrachians, fishes, birds, and 
mammals. A list of the insects and other things that have been found in trouts’ stomachs would 
“fill a book.” 
The trout of brooks and young trout feed mainly upon the aquatic larvae of numerous 
species of insects, particularly caddis fly. May fly, Chironomus and dragon fly, also upon insects 
that fall upon the water or hover over the water while depositing their eggs. All brooks contain 
more or less of this kind of food. 
The food of trout of larger streams, ponds, and lakes consists of the particular kinds that 
the water affords, often differing materially. In general, however, it may be said that in these 
places, too, there is usually a supply of such insects as were just enumerated, also varying with 
the time of the year. In the lakes, however, the general dependence is upon some kind or kinds 
of fishes, although at times the diet is varied with insects and such more or less accidental ani- 
mal life as may become available. The regular food supply of the trout of the Rangeley Lakes, 
aside from the insects and such other accidental or incidental animals, was formerly, without 
much doubt, the small fishes fixing there, to some extent including its own young and eggs. 
The Blueback Trout was believed by the late Commissioner Stanley to have been the main 
dependence of the large trout, regarding wluch the commissioners said in one of their reports, it 
was to the trout of Rangeley Lakes what the myriads of smelt were to some other waters. The 
subsequent introduction of smelts afforded the trout an unlimited and unexcelled food supply. 
In Forest and Stream, November 24, 1900, J. Parker Whitney wrote: “The saltwater 
smelt introduced a few years ago has increased extensively and extended to all the lakes of the 
range. This fish seems to readily habituate itself to most all freshwater lakes, and has increased 
