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KENDALL: NEW ENGLAND CHARES. 
only the backbone of the first one eaten. It is the feed. Millions of the chubs, Cyprinidae, 
are there for trout to eat. It is probable that these numerous Cyprinidae are increasing faster 
than the trout.” 
The explanation to the effect that the food is the main cause of the size attained is doubt- 
less true, but his inference that it was the abundance of food in the Rangeley Lakes that 
resulted in larger fish than elsewhere in Maine was not well founded. In some other Maine 
waters, Moosehead for instance, such food as he mentioned is fully as abundant, with some 
additional species. Still other lakes are even better supplied. The probabilities are, too, that 
trout fully as large as those of Rangeley are taken or at least occur in other Maine waters, 
although the Rangeleys still hold the cup for the record fish. In Square Lake not many years 
ago a trout of ten pounds was caught and the present writer has personal knowledge of one of 
over 11 pounds taken not long ago in Belgrade Lake. 
The fact is that the Rangeleys have been before the public for a longer time and the records 
of big fish have been advertised. Less famous waters have doubtless afforded local fishermen 
at least as large fish as ever were authentically recorded from the Rangeleys but public attention 
was not called to them. 
However, it is, as the correspondent said, due in great part to the food. But combined 
with plenty of available food must be room in which to grow. For some reason or other there 
seems to be a necessity for range, — a trout will not attain a very large size in restricted quarters 
no matter how much food he has. 
The large size attained by the Rangeley trout naturally aroused interest regarding the age 
of the large fish and there is a tradition that when Professor Agassiz was asked how old the big 
Rangeley trout probably were, he replied that no man living could tell, they might be 10 or 200 
years old. 
The Forest and Stream of November 1, 1877, describes an experiment undertaken by 
George Shepard Page, president of the Oquossoc Club, directed toward learning something 
of the rate of growth of trout in Rangeley Lakes. Platinum wire was cut into one and one-half 
inch lengths, flattened at one end, and various numbers stamped thereon from \ to 4, also the 
numbers 70, 71, 72, etc., to denote the year. As trout were captured they were weighed, 
one of these tags passed through the skin just under the adipose fin, securely twisted, then 
the fish liberated. In the course of two or three of the years named a large number of these 
trout were labeled. In June, 1873, one of them was reported; a trout weighing 2j lbs. was 
caught and found to bear a tag marked “^-71,” showing that this particular fish had gained 
l| pounds in two years. No further notice of the results of this tagging appears to have 
been published. 
As previously stated, trout grow faster and larger in the larger bodies of water where 
food is plentiful than in smaller or more circumscribed places. Given plenty of room and 
