text:  They hand down to posterity in their barren technicalities a great deal of what is neither new nor true even in relation to subjects which lie within the sphere of ordinary observation --to birds and beasts which almost dwell among us and give utterance by articulate or intelligible sounds to a vast variety of instinctive and as it were explanatory emotions:--what marvel then that they should so often fail to inform us of what we desire to know regarding the silent because voiceless inhabitants of the world of waters? But that which naturalists have been unable to accomplish has so far as concerns the two invaluable species just alluded to been achieved by others with no pretension to the name; and we now propose to present our readers with a brief sketch of what we conceive to be the completed biography of salmon and sea-trout