12 
AMERICAN FISHES . 
certain areas within the limits of its range. The British Isles, France, 
the Rhine valley and Switzerland, New England and the South Atlantic 
states, are without it, and its distribution in Asiatic Russia is more restricted 
than that of Perea. 
This form is more subject to variation than the Perch, and probably a 
more recent product of evolution, and it has become differentiated into seve¬ 
ral fairly well-marked types. 
The North American species may be divided into two groups: (i) the 
typical form, most closely related to those of Europe, and (2) the form 
with small eyes, slender body, pointed head, smaller second dorsal and 
with pyloric coeca set aside by Gill and Jordan in the subgenus Cynoperca. 
In the latter category is placed S. canadense , having its spinous dorsal fin 
ornamented with two or three rows of round black spots, and without a blotch 
posteriorly, but with a dark patch at the base of each pectoral: within 
the limits of this species, Jordan recognizes three varieties or subspecies 
which intergrade to some extent, but which by old-school naturalists would 
have been regarded as valid species. The first of these is the Sauger or 
Pickering of the St. Lawrence region, S. canadense canadense , with 
the opercles and bones of the head considerably rougher, the number or 
opercular spines, (which are merely the free ends of the striae), increased, 
and the head more closely and extensively scaly. 
The second is the common Sand Pike, or Sauger, of the Great 
Lakes, S. canadense griseum , the Lucioperc'a grisea of DeKay’s “ New York 
Fauna,” and many other ichthyologies. This form is now plentiful in the 
Ohio River into which it is supposed to have made its way since the con¬ 
struction of the Ohio and Erie Canal. 
The third is the Sand Pike of the upper Missouri, S. canadense boreum , 
which is rather slenderer than that of the Great Lakes, having a long 
slender nose and a head more flattened and snake-like. 
A certain type of coloration is characteristic of S. canadense in all its 
forms, and it has fewer rays in the second dorsal fin, there being only 18, 
more scaly cheeks, a more prominent armature of the operculum and most 
significant of all, the pyloric coeca are small and unequal in length and 
are never less than four in number, and sometimes as many as seven. In the 
other American species these number only three, and are nearly equal in 
length and about as long as the stomach. Whoever wishes to identify our 
Pike-Perches accurately must not fail to dissect them and examine this fea¬ 
ture of internal structure. 
