Results of Researches into Salmonids

[iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu]

	No, the thing I was vaguely remembering is not the "salmon trout"
(salmo trutta).  It is the so-called "Danube salmon", or "huchen"  (hucho
hucho) which is not actually a salmon, or even a trout, but a very close
relative of these.  Pictures (p. 49 of "The Encyclopedia of Aquatic Life")
show something that looks sort of like a monster salmon or trout (weights
of over one hundred pounds have been reported).  The fish is big enough
that in the Volga it gets confused with sturgeon.  (Go figure:  it does
not actually look anything like a sturgeon.)

	There are two kinds, the European and the Asian.  The European
kind lives only in the Danube system, while the Asian kind is described as
living "from the Volga to the Amur", whatever that means (presumably
centrqal and northern Asia).

	Turning to Malory, and to Diebold as reported by Malory, it seems
that somebody has screwed up, for it is said that huchen do not occur in
"the Pontic-Caspian steppe".  As the Volga flows into the Caspian, I find
it difficult to see how this can be right.  Perhaps Diebold was not aware
of the Asian species?

	But if Diebold is right that no PIE word for this fish can be
reconstructed, then the Caspian part of the Pontic-Caspian steppe would be
excluded as a possible homeland, by the usual arguments (which are
necessarily decisive.)

	Speaking of the Caspian, there is (or was) a sub-species of tiger
called the Caspian tiger.  Though in recent times it has been restricted
to the mountains (Elburz?) south of Teheran, it was formerly found along
some of the rivers of the Eastern steppe (the Oxus and all that), as were
pigs, its main prey.  This too seems negative (thought not necessarily
decisively so) for this region having been the much-discussed homeland.

					DLW