We found trout in Pacific Creek at every point where we examined it. In Two-Ocean Pass we obtained specimens from each of the streams, and in such positions as would have permitted them to pass easily from one side of the divide to the other. We also caught trout in Atlantic Creek below the pass, and in the upper Yellowstone, where they were abundant.
Thus it is certain that there is no obstruction even in dry weather to prevent the passage of trout from the Snake River to Yellowstone Lake; it is quite evident that trout do pass over in this way; and it is almost absolutely certain that Yellowstone Lake was stocked with trout from the west, via Two-Ocean Pass.
From the basin of Snake River above Shoshone Falls we know at least twelve different species of fishes, but of all these the trout is the only one which has been able to pass over the Continental Divide and establish itself in Yellowstone Lake and its tributary streams, for no other species is known from those waters. But these twelve species are, as a rule, fishes of intermediate altitudes, rarely ascending into streams so cold as Pacific Creek. The only one which accompanies the trout into Pacific Creek is the blob (Cottus bairdi punctulatus), which we found even in Two-Ocean Pass, but it has never been seen on the Yellowstone side of the pass.
| THE DECLINE IN RAILWAY CHARGES. |
By H. T. NEWCOMB.
THE efficiency of any general system of transportation necessarily depends upon its safety, speed, and cost, and of these the last is clearly of paramount importance, for, unless charges can be made sufficiently moderate, no means of transportation can be generally available to the public, even though it possesses in the highest degree each of the other qualities. The superiority of railways as a means of moving passengers and freight between localities not connected by natural waterways lies primarily in the fact that they furnish transportation at a cost so low when compared with all other means of transportation that even the highest railway charges are relatively insignificant.
Competent authority has stated that, under the best methods of transportation over ordinary highways, wheat, the most valuable of cereal products, would bear transportation only two hundred and fifty miles to markets where it would sell for a dollar and a half per bushel, and that the market for corn at seventy-five cents per bushel must be within a radius of a hundred and fifty miles from the point of production. To-day, both of these products are carried from the great surplus-producing regions
