Still more excellent as a food-fish than even these exquisite species is the famous eulachon, or candle-fish (_Thaleichthys pacificus_). The Chinook name, usually written eulachon, is perhaps more accurately represented as ulchen. This little fish has the form of a smelt and reaches the length of nearly a foot. In the spring it ascends in enormous numbers all the rivers north of the Columbia, as far as Skaguay, for a short distance for the purpose of spawning. These runs take place usually in advance of the salmon-runs. Various predatory fishes and sea-birds persecute the eulachon during its runs, and even the stomachs of the sturgeons are often found full of the little fishes, which they have taken in by their sucker-like mouths. At the time of the runs the eulachon are extremely fat, so much so that it is said that when dried and a wick drawn through the body they may be used as candles. On Nass River, in British Columbia, a stream in which their run is greatest, there is a factory for the manufacture of eulachon-oil from them. This delicate oil is proposed as a substitute for cod-liver oil in medicine. Whatever may be its merits in this regard, it has the disadvantage in respect to salability of being semi-solid or lard-like at ordinary temperatures, requiring melting to make it flow as oil. The eulachon is a favorite pan-fish in British Columbia. The writer has had considerable experience with it, broiled and fried, in its native region, and has no hesitation in declaring it to be the best-flavored food-fish in American waters. It is fat, tender, juicy, and richly flavored, with comparatively few troublesome bones. It does not, however, bear transportation well. The Indians in Alaska bury the eulachon in the ground in great masses. After the fish are well decayed they are taken out and the oil pressed from them. The odor of the fish and the oil is then very offensive, less so, however, than that of some forms of cheese eaten by civilized people. [Illustration: FIG. 84.—Page of William Clark's handwriting with sketch of the Eulachon (_Thaleichthys pacificus_), the first notice of the species. Columbia River, 1805. (Expedition of Lewis & Clark.) (Reproduced from the original in the possession of his granddaughter Mrs. Julia Clark Voorhis, through the courtesy of Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Company, publishers of the "Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.") ] The capelin (_Mallotus villosus_) closely resembles the eulachon, differing mainly in its broader pectorals and in the peculiar scales of the males. In the male fish a band of scales above the lateral line and along each side of the belly become elongate, closely imbricated, with the free points projecting, giving the body a villous appearance. It is very abundant on the coasts of Arctic America, both in the Atlantic and the Pacific, and is an important source of food for the natives of those regions. [Illustration: