The trout are rapidly disappearing from our streams through the agency of the manufacturer and the summer boarder. In the words of an excellent angler, the late Myron W. Reed of Denver: "This is the last generation of trout-fishers. The children will not be able to find any. Already there are well-trodden paths by every stream in Maine, in New York, and in Michigan. I know of but one river in North America by the side of which you will find no paper collar or other evidence of civilization. It is the Nameless River. Not that trout will cease to be. They will be hatched by machinery and raised in ponds, and fattened on chopped liver, and grow flabby and lose their spots. The trout of the restaurant will not cease to be. He is no more like the trout of the wild river than the fat and songless reedbird is like the bobolink. Gross feeding and easy pond-life enervate and deprave him. The trout that the children will know only by legend is the gold-sprinkled, living arrow of the white water; able to zigzag up the cataract; able to loiter in the rapids; whose dainty meat is the glancing butterfly."

The brook-trout adapts itself readily to cultivation in artificial ponds. It has been successfully transported to Europe, and it is already abundant in certain streams in England, in California, and elsewhere.

In Dublin Pond, New Hampshire, is a gray variety without red spots, called Salvelinus agassizi.

The "Dolly Varden" trout, or malma (Salvelinus malma), is very similar to the brook-trout, closely resembling it in size, form, color, and habits. It is found always to the westward of the Rocky Mountains, in the streams of northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, Alaska, and Kamchatka, as far as the Kurile Islands. It abounds in the sea in the northward, and specimens of ten to twelve pounds weight are not uncommon in Puget Sound and especially in Alaska. The Dolly Varden trout is, in general, slenderer and less compressed than the Eastern brook-trout. The red spots are found on the back of the fish as well as on the sides, and the back and upper fins are without the blackish marblings and blotches seen in Salvelinus fontinalis. In value as food, in beauty, and in gaminess Salvelinus malma is very similar to its Eastern cousin.

In Alaska the Dolly Varden, locally known as salmon-trout, is very destructive to the eggs of the salmon, and countless numbers are taken in the salmon-nets of Alaska and thrown away as useless by the canners. In every coastwise stream of Alaska the water fairly "boils" with these trout. They are, however, not found in the Yukon. In northern Japan occurs Salvelinus pluvius, the iwana, a species very similar to the Dolly Varden, but not so large or so brightly colored. In the Kurile region and Kamchatka is another large charr, Salvelinus kundscha, with the spots large and cream-color instead of crimson.

Cristivomer, the Great Lake Trout.—Allied to the true charrs, but now placed by us in a different genus, Cristivomer, is the Great Lake trout, otherwise known as Mackinaw trout, longe, or togue (Cristivomer namaycush). Technically this fish differs from the true charrs in having on its vomer a raised crest behind the chevron and free from the shaft. This crest is armed with strong teeth. There are also large hooked teeth on the hyoid bone, and the teeth generally are proportionately stronger than in most of the other species. The Great Lake trout is grayish in color, light or dark according to its surroundings; and the body is covered with round paler spots, which are gray instead of red. The dorsal and caudal fins are marked with darker reticulations, somewhat as in the brook-trout. This noble species is found in all the larger lakes from New England and New York to Wisconsin, Montana, the Mackenzie River, and in all the lakes tributary to the Yukon in Alaska. We have taken examples from Lake Bennett, Lake Tagish, Summit Lake (White Pass), and have seen specimens from Lake La Hache in British Columbia. It reaches a much larger size than any Salvelinus, specimens of from fifteen to twenty pounds weight being not uncommon, while it occasionally attains a weight of fifty to eighty pounds. As a food-fish it ranks high, although it may be regarded as somewhat inferior to the brook-trout or the whitefish. Compared with other salmonoids, the Great Lake trout is a sluggish, heavy, and ravenous fish. It has been known to eat raw potato, liver, and corn-cobs,—refuse thrown from passing steamers. According to Herbert, "a coarse, heavy, stiff rod, and a powerful oiled hempen or flaxen line, on a winch, with a heavy sinker; a cod-hook, baited with any kind of flesh, fish, or fowl,—is the most successful, if not the most orthodox or scientific, mode of capturing him. His great size and immense strength alone give him value as a fish of game; but when hooked he pulls strongly and fights hard, though he is a boring, deep fighter, and seldom if ever leaps out of the water, like the true salmon or brook-trout."

In the depths of Lake Superior is a variety of the Great Lake trout known as the Siscowet (Cristivomer namaycush siskawitz), remarkable for its extraordinary fatness of flesh. The cause of this difference lies probably in some peculiarity of food as yet unascertained.

The Ayu, or Sweetfish.—The ayu, or sweetfish, of Japan, Plecoglossus altivelis, resembles a small trout in form, habits, and scaling. Its teeth are, however, totally different, being arranged on serrated plates on the sides of the jaws, and the tongue marked with similar folds. The ayu abounds in all clear streams of Japan and Formosa. It runs up from the sea like a salmon. It reaches the length of about a foot. The flesh is very fine and delicate, scarcely surpassed by that of any other fish whatsoever. It should be introduced into clear short streams throughout the temperate zones.

In the river at Gifu in Japan and in some other streams the ayu is fished for on a large scale by means of tamed cormorants. This is usually done from boats in the night by the light of torches.

Cormorant-fishing.—The following account of cormorant-fishing is taken, by the kind permission of Mr. Caspar W. Whitney, from an article contributed by the writer to Outing, April, 1902:

Tamagawa means Jewel River, and no water could be clearer. It rises somewhere up in the delectable mountains to the eastward of Musashi, among the mysterious pines and green-brown fir-trees, and it flows across the plains bordered by rice-fields and mulberry orchards to the misty bay of Tokyo. It is, therefore, a river of Japan, and along its shores are quaint old temples, each guarding its section of primitive forest, picturesque bridges, huddling villages, and torii, or gates through which the gods may pass.

The stream itself is none too large—a boy may wade it—but it runs on a wide bed, which it will need in flood-time, when the snow melts in the mountains. And this broad flood-bed is filled with gravel, with straggling willows, showy day-lilies, orange amaryllis, and the little sky-blue spider-flower, which the Japanese call chocho, or butterfly-weed.

In the Tamagawa are many fishes: shining minnows in the white ripples, dark catfishes in the pools and eddies, and little sculpins and gobies lurking under the stones. Trout dart through its upper waters, and at times salmon run up from the sea.

But the one fish of all its fishes is the ayu. This is a sort of dwarf salmon, running in the spring and spawning in the rivers just as a salmon does. But it is smaller than any salmon, not larger than a smelt, and its flesh is white and tender, and so very delicate in its taste and odor that one who tastes it crisply fried or broiled feels that he has never tasted real fish before. In all its anatomy the ayu is a salmon, a dwarf of its kind, one which our ancestors in England would have called a "samlet." Its scientific name is Plecoglossus altivelis. Plecoglossus means plaited tongue, and altivelis, having a high sail; for the skin of the tongue is plaited or folded in a curious way, and the dorsal fin is higher than that of the salmon, and one poetically inclined might, if he likes, call it a sail. The teeth of the ayu are very peculiar, for they constitute a series of saw-edged folds or plaits along the sides of the jaws, quite different from those of any other fish whatsoever.

In size the ayu is not more than a foot to fifteen inches long. It is like a trout in build, and its scales are just as small. It is light yellowish or olive in color, growing silvery below. Behind its gills is a bar of bright shining yellow, and its adipose fin is edged with scarlet. The fins are yellow, and the dorsal fin shaded with black, while the anal fin is dashed with pale red.

So much for the river and the ayu. It is time for us to go afishing. It is easy enough to find the place, for it is not more than ten miles out of Tokyo, on a fine old farm just by the ancient Temple of Tachikawa, with its famous inscribed stone, given by the emperor of China.

At the farmhouse, commodious and hospitable, likewise clean and charming after the fashion of Japan, we send for the boy who brings our fishing-tackle.

They come waddling into the yard, the three birds with which we are to do our fishing. Black cormorants they are, each with a white spot behind its eye, and a hoarse voice, come of standing in the water, with which it says y-eugh whenever a stranger makes a friendly overture. The cormorants answer to the name of Ou, which in Japanese is something like the only word the cormorants can say. The boy puts them in a box together and we set off across the drifted gravel to the Tamagawa. Arrived at the stream, the boy takes the three cormorants out of the box and adjusts their fishing-harness. This consists of a tight ring about the bottom of the neck, of a loop under each wing, and a directing line.

Two other boys take a low net. They drag it down the stream, driving the little fishes—ayu, zakko, haë, and all the rest—before it. The boy with the cormorants goes in advance. The three birds are eager as pointer dogs, and apparently full of perfect enjoyment. To the right and left they plunge with lightning strokes, each dip bringing up a shining fish. When the bird's neck is full of fishes down to the level of the shoulders, the boy draws him in, grabs him by the leg, and shakes him unceremoniously over a basket until all the fishes have flopped out.

The cormorants watch the sorting of the fish with eager eyes and much repeating of y-eugh, the only word they know. The ayu are not for them, and some of the kajikas and hazés were prizes of science. But zakko (the dace) and haë (the minnow) were made for the cormorant. The boy picks out the chubs and minnows and throws them to one bird and then another. Each catches his share on the fly, swallows it at one gulp, for the ring is off his neck by this time, and then says y-eugh, which means that he likes the fun, and when we are ready will be glad to try again. And no doubt they have tried it many times since, for there are plenty of fishes in the Jewel River, zakko and haë as well as ayu.

Fossil Salmonidæ.—Fossil salmonidæ are rare and known chiefly from detached scales, the bones in this family being very brittle and easily destroyed. Nothing is added to our knowledge of the origin of these fishes from such fossils.

A large fossil trout or salmon, called Rhabdofario lacustris, has been brought from the Pliocene at Catherine's Creek, Idaho. It is known from the skull only. Thaumaturus luxatus, from the Miocene of Bohemia, shows the print of the adipose fin. As already stated (p. 62), fragments of the hooked jaws of salmon, from pleistocene deposits in Idaho, are in the museum of the University of California.