History of Vermont - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853 Excerpt: ...the ventrals, which are attached near the middle of the abdomen, and under a point a little anterior to the first dorsal, and reach backward to the vent. The anal fin has its first ray short and spinous. Caudal fin forked. Nostrils and eyes large; irides yellow. A depression on the head, between the orbits, divided longitudinally by a long ridge. Scales rather large and rough, having finely serrated edges. Length, from 3 to 5 inches. The following are the measurements of one out of three living specimens before me, when the above description was made: Total length, 3.9 inches; to the pectoral fin, 1; to ventral, 1.45; first dorsal, 1.5; anal, 2.1; adipose, 2.6; central base of caudal, 3.2. Fin rays, B. 6, D. 110--0, P. 13, V. 8,A.1l7, 0.18;. H1s'1'onY.--'l'he first knowledge I had of-this fish was in the summer of 1841, when I found a specimen of it, 5 inches long, which was dead, and had been drifted up by the waves on the lake shore, in Burling. ton. On examining it, I found it to possess the adipose and abdominal fins of the trouts, but, in its teeth, gill covers and particularly in its hard serrated scales, to bear considerable resemblance to the perch fam-l ily. After searching all the books within my reach, without finding it described, I concluded that it might be new, both in genus and species, and accordingly, in ' allusion to the above mentioned properties, I described it in my journal under the provisional generic name of Sam1orsucs. A notice of this fish was omitted in my Hist-ory of Vermont, published in 1842, because I had then only one specimen, and, upon that one, with my little experience, I did not think it prudent to found a new genus and species. When Prof. Agassiz was at Burlington, in 1847, I submitted the above mentioned s...