488 
AMERICAN FISHES. 
Europe in March and April, and sometimes, it is said, in May. Ours 
rarely grows to the length of sixteen inches, and the largest Milner could 
find weighed less than two pounds, the average length being ten or eleven 
inches, with a weight of half a pound. The European fish is said to grow 
to eighteen inches long, and the weight of four pounds and one-half. 
Milner remarks : “ Like the Brook Trout, their natural food consists of 
the insects that light or fall upon the surface of the stream. Their stomachs 
were found to contain broken and partially digested specimens of coleop- 
tera, neuroptera, as well as the larvae of species of the dragon-flies. There 
were also found in their stomachs the leaves of the white cedar, Thuja occi¬ 
dentalism which drop continually on the surface of the stream, and are 
probably taken because the fish in their quick darts to the surface mistake 
them for insects falling upon the water. ” In France they are said also 
to devour little mollusks and the eggs of fishes. 
The propagation of the Michigan Grayling was attempted as soon as its 
existence was known. Mr. Fred. Mather and Mr. Seth Green, always 
pioneers in such enterprises, were the first to attempt it, and they were 
soon followed by others, and the Grayling is now to be found in many 
fish-cultural establishments. I saw two hundred fine yearlings at Wythe- 
ville Va., in 1887. 
There has been much discussion over the claims of the Grayling as a 
game-fish, and also its excellence for food. It has many ardent admirers 
and detractors. The enthusiasm with which it was greeted ten years ago 
has somewhat subsided, and it seems doubtful whether a vote of the guild 
of American anglers would now place it in the first rank of noble fishes. 
“There is no species sought for by anglers,” writes Mather, “ that sur¬ 
passes the Grayling in beauty. They are more elegantly formed and more 
graceful than the Trout, and their great dorsal fin is a superb mark of love¬ 
liness. When the well-lids were lifted, and the sun’s rays admitted, light¬ 
ing up the delicate olive-brown tints of the back and sides, the bluish-white 
of the abdomen, and the mingling of tints of rose, pale blue, and purplish- 
pink on the fins, they displayed a combination of colors equaled by no fish 
outside of the tropics.” 
