VOL. LXXXVI 
APRIL, 1916 
No. 4 
The Lost “Lady of the Streams” 
Some Observations on the Grayling by the Man Who Was the First to Propagate it Artificially 
By Dr. James A. Henshall. 
I N recent numbers of Forest and Stream I 
note an article on the graylings by Mr. 
Charles Bradford, and one on the Michigan 
grayling by Mr. W. B. Mershon, both very in¬ 
teresting papers. 
In 1896 I was offered the choice of three new 
Federal fisheries stations in Iowa, Texas and 
Montana. I took the superintendency of the 
Montana station for the express purpose of at¬ 
tempting the propagation of the Montana gray¬ 
ling, as all previous efforts in that direction with 
the Michigan grayling had failed. 
I studied thoroughly the accounts of the gray¬ 
lings of the United States and England, their 
life and scientific histories, with what I could 
gather from friends who had some knowledge 
of their habits, and from my own experience 
with the Michigan and English graylings. After 
repeated experiments during the first year I had 
the gratification of knowing that my efforts 
were successful. For ten years millions of fruit¬ 
ful eggs were shipped to various Federal and 
state hatcheries that were contiguous to trout 
waters that were cold enough for the existence 
of the fry. Millions of fry and fingerlings were 
also shipped or planted in streams in Montana 
and adjoining states. Adults propagated and 
reared at the Bozeman hatchery were exhibited 
at the world fairs at St. Louis and Seattle. 
There are three species of grayling in the 
United States, and though structural differences 
are slight, they are nevertheless distinctive spe¬ 
cies. The Arctic grayling is regarded as the 
parent stock from which the others descended. 
It is not at all unreasonable to suppose that the 
Michigan and Montana graylings were trans¬ 
ported to those states in prehistoric times, per¬ 
haps during the ice age, or possibly during the 
glacial period. Few or many may have been 
The Grayling Cannot Survive Against the 
* Incursion of the Aggressive Brook Trout. 
carried on ice fields, or with the glacial drift,, 
and dropped in the sandy streams of Michigan 
or gravelly streams of Montana, where through 
changed conditions and strange environments 
they have evolved into distinct species. 
This theory seems plausible from the fact that 
the great lake, or Mackinaw trout, also an Arc¬ 
tic species, is found in a mountain lake, together 
with grayling; this lake is but a quarter of a 
mile from the grayling egg-collecting station of 
the Bozeman hatchery, at the source of the Jef¬ 
ferson River. The Mackinaw trout is found 
nowhere else west of Lake Michigan or south 
of Canada, except in the mountain lake men¬ 
tioned, and it is more than likely that it accom¬ 
panied the deposit of the grayling, which is 
abundant in the lake. 
Mr. Mershon is one of the pioneer anglers for 
grayling in Michigan, and is well acquainted 
with its life history. Its unfortunate disappear¬ 
ance from waters that once teemed with the 
“Lady of the Streams” is to be attributed, in the 
first place, as Mr. Mershon states, to logging 
activities, and later to the introduction of brook 
trout and rainbow trout to the depleted streams. 
This latter cause is answerable entirely for its 
extinction in waters not affected by logging opera¬ 
tions, as for instance, Pine Lake and its outlet 
stream to Lake Michigan, near Charlevoix. In 
1870 I took grayling in Lake Michigan from the 
pier at that place. But those waters are now 
barren of grayling owing to the incursion of 
brook trout, the most aggressive of all the trout 
species. 
As an illustration of this aggressive propensity 
I may mention that when I first went to Boze¬ 
man Station, Bridger Creek, flowing through the 
grounds, was thickly populated with grayling, 
the native red-throat trout and Rocky Mountain 
