Genio C. Scott, who laid no claim to being a scientist, but who was a close observer, also compares the same fish, which he calls the Silver-trout or sea-trout, _Trutta Argentina_, or _Trutta Marina_, with the brook trout. He says, "The sea-trout is similar to the brook-trout in all facial peculiarities. It is shaped like the brook-trout. The vermicular marks on the back, and above the lateral line, are like those of the brook-trout; its vermicular white and amber dots are like the brook-trout's; its fins are like the brook-trout's, even to the square or slightly lunate end of the tail. It has the amber back and silver sides of such brook-trout as have access to the estuary food of the eggs of different fishes, the young herring," etc.
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.