These descriptions differ but little, and are, I believe, as accurate in the main as can be given. Both these writers, as will be seen, are discussing, and have taken opposite sides upon the question, whether the Canadian sea-trout is an anadromous brook-trout. This question was very well presented by Mr. Macdonough (my companion) in an article entitled “Sea-Trout Fishing,” published in Scribner’s Monthly Magazine for May, 1877. He begins thus: “What is a sea-trout? A problem to begin with, though quite a minor one, since naturalists have for some time past kept specimens waiting their leisure to decide whether he is a cadet of the noble salmon race, or merely the chief of the familiar brook-trout tribe. Science inclines to the former view upon certain slight but sure indications noted in spines and gill covers. The witness of guides and gaffers leads the same way; and the Indians all say that the habits of the sea-trout and brook-trout differ, and that the contrast between the markings of the two kinds of fish taken from the same pool, forbids the idea of their identity. Yet the testimony of many accomplished sportsmen affirms it. The gradual change of color in the same fish as he ascends the stream from plain silvery gray to deepest dotted bronze; his haunts at the lower end of pools, behind rocks, and among roots; his action in taking the fly with an upward leap, not downwards from above—all these resemblances support the theory that the sea-trout is only an anadromous brook-trout.... Indeed the difference in color between the brook-trout and sea-trout ranges within a far narrower scale than that between parr, grilse, and salmon.” The reader who has not read the paper would doubtless thank me for quoting it entire.

As will have been seen, the conscientious and lamented Thad. Norris, when he wrote as above quoted, thought that the Canadian sea-trout were not the English Salmo Trutta, nor the Salmo Fontinalis, and as proof gave this table showing the number of rays in the fins of the following fish:

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He adds, speaking of the last two fish—“there being only a difference of one ray in the pectorals, which may be accidental.” I am credibly informed that some years after his book was written, and after a more familiar acquaintance with the S. Canadensis, his views underwent an entire change, and that he wrote “the S. Canadensis is the S. Fontinalis gone to sea.”

The space allowed me for this paper will not admit of my quoting further from the writings of those above mentioned or of others upon this subject.

I will now state, as briefly as I can, my own views resulting from long familiarity with brook-trout, gained by thirty-five years of angling for them, my acquaintance with the sea-trout of Long Island, and those found in Canadian waters. In regard to the markings of the fish immediately after migrating from salt to fresh water it is unnecessary to say more, except that the vermicular marks differ somewhat in different fish. Some that I caught and examined closely had, as Scott says, “vermiculate marks on the back very plain and distinct.” And on others, as Norris writes, “the markings on the back were lighter and not so vermiculated in form, but resembling more the broken segments of a circle.” The fish in this respect differ from each other far less than often do brook trout, taken from the same pool. Norris thinks the sea-trout more slender in form than the brook-trout until the former attains the weight of two pounds. I have not been able to discover this difference between sea-trout and the brook-trout taken from the waters of this State. The trout of Rangeley Lake, and waters adjacent in Maine (I assume, as I believe, they are genuine brook trout), are thicker and shorter than trout of the same weight caught in the State of New York, or the Canadian sea-trout. I have two careful and accurate drawings—one of a sea-trout which weighed four and one-quarter pounds, and measured twenty-two and one-half inches in length, and five and one-eighth inches in depth—the other of a Rangeley trout that weighed eight pounds, and measured twenty-six inches in length, and eight and a half inches in depth. I have seen and measured several Rangeley trout two of seven pounds each, one of four and one-half pounds, etc., and in all I think there was a similar disproportion as compared with the other trout above mentioned.

As regards the number of rays in the fins of sea-trout I can only say that while fishing for them I counted the rays and found them to compare in number with those of the brook-trout as given by Norris in the table inserted ante.