Elementary Zoology Part 18

The caudal vertebrae have no ribs and leave no room below for viscera.

Their lower arch (haemal), similar to the dorsal (neural) arch, surrounds a blood-vessel. The fins of a fish are composed of bony rods or rays joined by membrane. Some of these rays may be unbranched and unjointed, being then known as spines, and usually occupy the front part of the fin. Other rays are made up of little joints and are usually branched toward their tip. Such ones are called soft rays. Soft rays make up the greatest part of most fins. The vertical fins are on the middle line of the body. These are the dorsal above, a.n.a.l below, and caudal forming the end of the tail. The paired pectoral and ventral fins are ranged one on each side corresponding to the arms and legs of higher animals. The pectoral fin or arm is fastened to a series of bones called the shoulder girdle. These bones do not correspond to those in the shoulder girdle of the higher animals, and the various parts in the two structures are differently named. The uppermost bone of the shoulder girdle is usually attached to the skull. To the lowermost is attached the rudimentary pelvis, which supports the hinder limb or ventral fin. Usually the pelvis is farther back and loose in the flesh, but sometimes it is placed far forward, being occasionally attached at the chin.

The head contains the various bones of the cranium, usually closely wedged together and not easily distinguished. The jaws are each made of several pieces; the lower one is suspended from the skull by a chain of three flat bones. The jaws may bear any one of a great variety of forms of teeth or no teeth at all, and any of the bones of the mouth-cavity and throat may have teeth as well. On the outside of the head are numerous bones called membrane bones, because they are made up of ossified membrane. The most important of these is the opercle or gill-cover. Within are the tongue with the five gill-arches attached to it below and to the floor of the skull above, the last arch being usually modified to form the pharyngeal jaw.

The stomach may be a blind sac with entrance and exit close together, or it may have the form of a tube or siphon. At its end are often found the large glandular tubes called pyloric caeca which secrete a digestive fluid; and to its right side is attached the red spleen. The liver is large, having usually, but not always, a gall-bladder; it pours its secretion into the upper intestine. In fishes which feed on plants the intestine is long, but it is short in those which eat flesh, because flesh is digested in the stomach, not in the intestines. The kidney is usually a long slender forked gland showing little variation. The egg-glands differ greatly in different sorts of fishes, the size and number of eggs varying equally. The air-bladder is a lung which has lost both lung structure and respiratory function, being simply a sac filled with gas secreted from the blood, and lying in the upper part of the abdominal cavity. It is subject to many variations. In the gar pike, bow-fin and the lung-fishes of the tropics, the air-bladder is a true lung used for breathing and connected by a sort of glottis with the sophagus. In others it is rudimentary or even wholly wanting, while in still others its function as an air-sac is especially p.r.o.nounced, and in many it is joined through the modified bones of the neck to the organ of hearing.

The blood of the fish is purified by circulation through its gills.

These are a series of slender filaments attached to bony arches. Among them the blood flows in and out, coming in contact with the water which the fish takes in through its mouth and which pa.s.ses across the gills to be expelled through the gill-openings. The blood is received from the body into the first chamber of the heart, a muscular sac called the auricle. From here it pa.s.ses into the ventricle, a chamber with thicker walls, the contraction of which sends it to the gills, thence without return to the heart it pa.s.ses over the body. The circulation of blood in fishes is slow, and the blood, which receives relatively little oxygen, is cold, being but little warmer than the water in which the individual fish lives.

Inside the cranium or brain-case is the brain, small and composed of ganglia which are smooth at the surface and contain little gray matter. At the posterior end of the brain is the thickened end of the spinal cord, called the medulla oblongata. Next overlapping this is the cerebellum, always single. Before this lie the largest pair of ganglia, the optic lobes or midbrain, round, smooth, and hollow. From the under side of these, nerves run to the eyes with or without a chiasma or crossing. In front of the optic lobes and smaller than them is the cerebrum or forebrain, usually of two ganglia but sometimes (in the sharks) united into one. In front of these are the small olfactory lobes which send nerves to the nostrils.

The sense organs are well developed. The sense of touch has in some fishes special organs for its better effectiveness. For instance certain fin-rays in some fishes, or, as in the catfish, slender, fleshy, whip-like processes on the head, are developed as feelers or special tactile organs. Other fishes, the sucker and loach for example, have specially sensitive lips and noses with which they explore their surroundings. The sense of taste does not seem to be well developed in this group. Taste-papillae are often present in small numbers on the tongue or on the palate. The sense of smell is good.

The olfactory organs, one on each side of the head, are hollow sac-like depressions, closed at the rear. In most cases each sac has two openings or nostrils. The sense of hearing is not very keen. The ears are fluid-filled sacs buried in the skull, and without external or (except in a few cases) internal opening. Fishes are far more sensitive to sudden jars or sudden movements than to any sound. They possess what is generally believed to be a special sense organ not found in other animals. This is the lateral line which extends along the sides of the body and which consists of a series of modified scales (each one with a mucous channel) richly supplied with nerves.

The eyes are usually large and conspicuous. They differ mainly from the eyes of other vertebrates in their myopic spherical crystalline lens, made necessary by the density of the medium in which fishes live. There are usually no eyelids, the skin of the body being continuous but transparent over the eyes. Being near-sighted, fishes do not discriminate readily among forms, their special senses fitting them in general to distinguish motions of their enemies or prey rather than to ascertain exactly the nature of particular things.

The colors of fishes are in general appearance protective. Thus most individuals are white on the belly, mimicking the color of the sky to the enemy which pursues them from below. Seen from above most of them are greenish, like the water, or brownish gray and mottled, like the bottom. Those that live on sand are sand-colored, those on lava black, and those among rose-red sea-weeds bright red. In many cases, especially among kinds that are protected by their activity, brilliant colors and showy markings are developed. This is especially true among fishes of the coral reefs, though species scarcely less brilliant are found among the darters of our American brooks.

Among fresh-water fishes bright colors, crimson, scarlet, blue, creamy white, are developed in the breeding season, the then vigorous males being the most highly colored. Many of the feeble minnows even become very brilliant in the nuptial season of May and June. Color in fishes is formed by minute oil-sacs on the scales, and it often changes quickly with changes in the nervous condition of the individuals.

=Development and life-history.=--The breeding habits of fishes are extremely varied. Most fishes do not pair, but in some cases pairing takes place as among higher animals. Ordinarily fishes lay their eggs on the bottom in shallow water, either in brooks, lakes, or in the sea. The eggs of fishes are commonly called sp.a.w.n, and egg-laying is referred to as sp.a.w.ning. The sp.a.w.n of some fishes is esteemed a special food delicacy. Spring is the usual time of sp.a.w.ning, though some fishes sp.a.w.n in summer and some even in winter; generally they move from their usual haunts for the purpose. The eggs of the different species vary much in size, ranging from an inch and a half in diameter (barn-door skate) down to the tiniest dots, like those of the herring. The number of eggs laid also varies greatly. The trout lays from 500 to 1,000, the salmon about 10,000, the herring 30,000 to 40,000, and some species of river fish 500,000, while certain flounders, sturgeons, and others each lay several millions of eggs.

The adults rarely pay any attention to the eggs, which are hatched directly by the heat of the sun or by heat absorbed from the water.

The length of incubation varies much. When the young fish leaves the egg-sh.e.l.l it carries, in the case of most species, a part of the yolk still hanging to its body. Its eyes are very large, and its fins are represented by thin strips of membrane. It usually undergoes no great changes in development from the first, resembling the adult except in size. But some of the ocean fishes show a metamorphosis almost as striking as that of insects or toads or frogs.

Some fishes build nests. Sticklebacks build elaborate nests in the brooks and defend them with spirit. Sunfishes do the same, but the nests are clumsier and not so well cared for.

The salmon is the type of fishes which run up from the sea to lay their eggs in fresh water. The king salmon of the Columbia River, for example, leaves the sea in the high waters of March and ascends without feeding for over a thousand miles, depositing its sp.a.w.n in some small brook in the fall. After making this long journey to lay the eggs, the salmon become much exhausted, battered and worn, and are often attacked by parasitic fungi. They soon die, probably none of them ever surviving to lay eggs a second time.

=Cla.s.sification.=--A fish is an aquatic vertebrate, fitted to breathe the air contained in water, and never developing fingers and toes.

Accepting this broad general definition we find at once that there are very great differences among fishes. Some differ more from others than the ordinary forms differ from rabbits or birds. So although we have ent.i.tled this chapter as if all fishes belonged to the cla.s.s Pisces, we cannot arrange them satisfactorily in less than three cla.s.ses.

=The lancelets (Leptocardii).=--The lowest cla.s.s of fish-like animals is that of the lancelets, the Leptocardii. These little creatures, translucent, buried in the sand, of the size and form of a small toothpick, are fishes reduced to their lowest terms. They have the form, life, and ways of a fish, but no differentiated skull, brain, heart, or eyes. Moreover they have no limbs, no jaws, no teeth, no scales. The few parts they do have are arranged as in a fish, and they show something in common with the fish embryo. Lacking a distinct head, the lancelets are put by some zoologists in a group called the Acrania, as opposed to the Craniata, which includes all the other vertebrates. Lancelets have been found in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean, on the west coast of North America, on the east coast of South America and on the coasts of j.a.pan, Australia, New Zealand, the East Indies and Malayan Islands. The best-known members of the group belong to the genus _Amphioxus_. There are but one to two other genera in the cla.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 113.--A lamprey, _Petromyzon marinus_. (After Goode.)]

=The lampreys and hag-fishes (Cyclostomata).=--The next cla.s.s of fish-like animals is that of the lampreys (fig. 113) and hag-fishes, the Cyclostomata. The lampreys and hags are easily distinguished from the true fishes by their sucking mouth without jaws, their single median nostril, their eel-like shape and lack of lateral appendages or paired fins. The hag-fishes (_Myxine_), which are marine, attach themselves by means of a sucker-like mouth to living fishes (the cod particularly), gradually sc.r.a.ping and eating their way into the abdominal cavity of the fish. These hags or "borers" "approach most nearly to the condition of an internal parasite of any vertebrate."

The lampreys, or lamprey-eels as they are often called because of their superficial resemblance to true eels, are both marine and fresh-water in their habitat, and most of them attach themselves to live fishes and suck their blood. They also feed on crustacea, insects, and worms. The brook-lamprey, _Lampetra wilderi_, is never parasitic. It reaches its full size in larval life and transforms simply for sp.a.w.ning. The sea- and lake-lampreys ascend small fresh-water streams when ready to lay their eggs, few living to return. Sometimes small piles of stones are made for nests. The young undergo a considerable metamorphosis in their development. The largest sea-lampreys reach a length of three feet. The common brook-lampreys are from eight to twelve inches long only.

=The true fishes (Pisces).=--All the other fish-like animals are grouped in the cla.s.s Pisces. They are characterized, when compared with the lower fish-like forms just referred to, by the presence of jaws, shoulder girdle, and pelvic girdle. The cla.s.s includes both the cartilaginous and bony fishes, and is divided into three sub-cla.s.ses, namely, the Elasmobranchii, including the sharks, rays, skates, torpedoes, etc., the Holocephali, including the chimaeras (a few strange-bodied forms), and the Teleostomi, including all the other fishes, as the trout, catfishes, darters, ba.s.s, herring, cod, mackerel, sturgeons, etc., etc.

=The sharks, skates, etc. (Elasmobranchii).=--The sharks and skates are characterized by the possession of a skeleton composed of cartilage and not bone, as in the bony fishes; they have no operculum; their teeth are distinct, often large and highly specialized, and their eggs are few and very large. There are two princ.i.p.al groups among Elasmobranchii, viz., the sharks, which usually have an elongate body, and always have the gill-openings on the sides, and the rays or skates, which have a broad flattened body with the gill-openings always on the under side. All the members of both groups are marine.

The sharks are active, fierce, usually large fishes, which live in the surface-waters of the ocean and make war on other marine animals, all of the species except half a dozen being fish-eaters. The shark's mouth is on the under side of the usually conical head, and the animal often turns over on its back in order to seize its prey. The largest American sharks, and the largest of all fishes, are the great basking-sharks (_Cetorhinus_), which reach a length of nearly forty feet. They get their name from their habit of gathering in numbers and floating motionless on the surface. They feed chiefly on fishes.

The hammer-headed sharks (_Sphyrna_) are odd sharks which have the head mallet or kidney shaped, twice as wide as long, the eyes being situated on the ends of the lateral expansions of the head. The man-eating or great white sharks (_Carcharodon_) are nearly as large as the basking-sharks, and are extremely voracious. They will follow ships for long distances for the refuse thrown overboard. They do not hesitate to attack man. Among the more familiar smaller sharks are the dog-fishes and sand-sharks of our Atlantic coast.

The rays and skates are also carnivorous, but are with few exceptions sluggish, lying at the bottom of shallow sh.o.r.e-waters. They feed on crabs, molluscs, and bottom-fishes. The small common skates, "tobacco-boxes" (_Raja erinacea_) (fig. 114), about twenty inches long, and the larger "barn-door skates" (_R. laevis_), are numerous along the Atlantic coast from Virginia northward. Especially interesting members of this group, because of the peculiar character of the injuries produced by them, are the sting-rays and torpedoes or electric-rays. The sting-rays (_Dasyatis_) have spines near the base of the tail which cause very painful wounds. The torpedoes (_Narcine_) have two large electrical organs, one on each side of the body just behind the head, with which they can give a strong electric shock. "The discharge from a large individual is sufficient to temporarily disable a man, and were these animals at all numerous they would prove dangerous to bathers."

Very different from the typical rays in external appearance are the saw-fishes (_Pristis pectinatis_) which belong to this group. The body is elongate and shark-like, and has a long saw-like snout. This saw, which in large individuals may reach a length of six feet and a breadth of twelve inches, makes its owner formidable among the small sardines and herring-like fishes on which it feeds. The saw-fishes live in tropical rivers, descending to the sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 114.--The common skate, _Raja erinacea_. (From Kingsley.)]

=The bony fishes (Teleostomi).=--The bony or true fishes are distinguished from the lampreys and sharks and rays by having in general the skeleton bony, not cartilaginous, the skull provided with membrane bones, and the eggs small and many. In this group are included all the fishes of our fresh-water lakes, ponds, and streams as well as most of the marine forms. Fish life, being spent under water, is not familiar to most of us, and beginning students are rarely helped enough in getting acquainted with the different kinds and the interesting habits of fishes. But they offer a field of study which is really of unusual interest and profit. We can refer in the following paragraphs to but few of the numerous common and readily found kinds, and to these but briefly.

Closely related to the sunfish, studied as example of the bony fishes, are the various kinds of ba.s.s, as the "c.r.a.ppie" (_Pomoxis annularis_), the calico ba.s.s (_P. separoides_), the rock-ba.s.s (_Ambloplites rupestris_) and the large-mouthed and small-mouthed black ba.s.s (_Micropterus salmoides_ and _M. dolomieu_ respectively). All the members of this sunfish and ba.s.s family are carnivorous fishes especially characteristic of the Mississippi valley.

Another family of many species especially common in the clear, swift, and strong Eastern rivers is that of the darters and perches. The darters are little slender-bodied fishes which lie motionless on the bottom, moving like a flash when disturbed and slipping under stones out of sight of their enemies. Some are most brilliantly colored, surpa.s.sing in this respect all other fresh-water fishes.

Unlike the sunfishes and darters are the catfishes, composing a great family, the Siluridae. The catfish (_Ameiurus_) gets its name from the long feelers about its mouth; from these feelers also come its other names of horned pout, or bull-head. It has no scales, but its spines are sharp and often barbed or jagged and capable of making a severe wound.

Remotely allied to the catfish are the suckers, minnows, and chubs, with smooth scales, soft fins and soft bodies and the flesh full of small bones. These little fish are very numerous in species, some kinds swarming in all fresh water in America, Europe, and Asia. They usually swim in the open water, the prey of every carnivorous fish, making up by their fecundity and their insignificance for their lack of defensive armature. In some species the male is adorned in the spring with bright pigment, red, black, blue, or milk-white. In some cases, too, it has bony warts or horns on its head or body. Such forms are known to the boys as horned dace.

Most interesting to the angler are the fishes of the salmon and trout (fig. 115) family, because they are gamy, beautiful, excellent as food and above all perhaps because they live in the swiftest and clearest waters in the most charming forests. The salmon live in the ocean most of their life, but ascend the rivers from the sea to deposit their eggs. The king salmon (_Oncorhynchus tschawytscha_) of the Columbia goes up the great river more than a thousand miles, taking the whole summer for it, and never feeding while in fresh water. Besides the different kinds of salmon, the black-spotted or true trout, the charr or red-spotted trout of various species, the whitefish (_Coregonus_), the grayling (_Thymallus signifer_) and the famous ayu of j.a.pan belong to this family.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 115.--The rainbow-trout, _Salmo iridens_. (From specimen.)]

In the sea are mult.i.tudes of fish forms arranged in many families. The myriad species of eels agree in having no ventral fins and in having the long flexible body of the snake. Most of them live in the sea, but the single genus (_Anguilla_) or true eel which ascends the rivers is exceedingly abundant and widely distributed. Most eels are extremely voracious, but some of them have mouths that would barely admit a pin-head. The codfish (_Gadus callarias_) is a creature of little beauty but of great usefulness, swarming in all arctic and subarctic seas. The herring (_Clupea harengus_), soft and weak in body, are more numerous in individuals than any other fishes. The flounders (fig.

116) of many kinds lie flat on the sea-bottom. They have the head so twisted that the two eyes occur both together on the uppermost side.

The members of the great mackerel tribe swim in the open sea, often in great schools. Largest and swiftest of these is the sword-fish (_Xiphias gladius_), in which the whole upper jaw is grown together to form a long bony sword, a weapon of offence that can pierce the wooden bottom of a boat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 116.--The winter flounder, _Pseudopleuronectes america.n.u.s_. (After Goode.)]

Many of the ocean fishes are of strange form and appearance. The sea-horses (_Hippocampus_ sp.) (fig. 117) are odd fishes covered with a bony sh.e.l.l and with the head having the physiognomy of that of a horse. They are little fishes rarely a foot long, and cling by their curved tails to floating seaweed. The pipefish (_Syngnathus fusc.u.m_) is a sea-horse straightened out. The porcupine-fishes and swellfishes (_Tetraodontidae_) have the power of filling the stomach with air which they gulp from the surface. They then escape from their pursuers by floating as a round spiny ball on the surface. The flying-fishes (_Exoctus_) leap out of the water and sail for long distances through the air, like gra.s.shoppers. They cannot flap their long pectoral fins and do not truly fly; nevertheless they move swiftly through the air and thus escape their pursuers. In its structure a flying-fish differs little from a pike or other ordinary fish.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 117.--A sea-horse, _Hippocampus heptagonus_.

(After Goode.)]

For an account of the fishes of North America see Jordan's "Manual of Vertebrates," eighth edition, pp. 5-173, and Jordan and Evermann's "Fishes of North and Middle America," where the 3,127 species known from our continent are described in detail with ill.u.s.trative figures.

=Habits and adaptations.=--The chief part of a fish's life is devoted to eating, and as most fishes feed on other fishes, all are equally considerably occupied in providing for their own escape.

In general the provisions for seizing prey are confined to sharp teeth and the strong muscles which propel the caudal fin. But in some cases special contrivances appear. In one large group known collectively as the "anglers" the first spine of the dorsal fin hangs over the mouth.

It has at its tip a fleshy appendage which serves as a bait. Little fishes nibble at this, the mouth opens, and they are gone. In the deep seas, many fishes are provided with phosph.o.r.escent spots or lanterns which light up the dark waters, and enable them to see their prey. In storms these lantern-fishes sometimes lose their bearings and are thrown upward to the surface.

In general the more predatory in its habits any fish is the sharper its teeth, and the broader its mouth. Among brook-fishes the pickerel has the largest mouth and the sharpest teeth. It has been called a "mere machine for the a.s.similation of other organisms." The trout has a large mouth and sharp teeth. It is a swift, voracious, and predatory fish, feeding even on its own kind. The sunfish is less greedy and its mouth and teeth are smaller, though it too eats other fish.

As means of escape, most fishes depend on their speed in swimming. But some hide among rocks and weeds, disguising themselves by a change in color to match their surroundings. Others, like the flounders and skates, lie flat on the bottom. Still others retreat to the shallows or the depths or the rock-pools or to any place safer than the open sea. Some are protected by spines which they erect when attacked. Some erect these spines only after they have been swallowed, tearing the stomach of their enemy and killing it, but too late to save themselves. Again in some species the spines are armed with poison which benumbs the enemy. Sometimes an electric battery about the head or on the sides gives the biting fish a severe shock and drives him away. Such batteries are found in the electric rays or torpedo, in the electric eel of Paraguay, the electric catfish of the Nile, the electric stargazer and other fishes.

Some fishes are protected by their poor and bitter flesh. Some have bony coats of mail and sometimes the coat of mail is covered with thorns, as in the porcupine-fish. This fish and various of its relatives have the habit of filling the stomach with air when disturbed, then floating belly upward, the th.o.r.n.y back only within reach of its enemies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 118.--The remora, or cling fish, _Remoropsis brachyptera_. Note sucker on top of head. (After Goode.)]

Many species (cling fishes) attach themselves to the rocks by a fleshy sucking-disk. Some (_Remora_) (fig. 118) cling to larger fishes by a strange sucking-disk on the head, a transformed dorsal fin, being thus shielded from the attacks of fish smaller than their protectors. Some small fishes seek the shelter of the floating jellyfishes, lurking among their poisoned tentacles. Others creep into the ma.s.ses of floating gulf-weed. Some creep into the sh.e.l.l of clams and snails. In the open channel of a sponge, the mouth of a tunicate and in similar cavities of various animals, little fishes may be found. A few fishes (hag-fishes) are parasitic on others, boring their way into the body and devouring the muscles with their rasp-like teeth.

Some fishes are provided with peculiar modifications of the gills which enable them to breathe for a time out of water. Such fish have the pectoral fins modified for a rather poor kind of locomotion on land, thus enabling them to move from pond to pond or from stream to stream. In cold climates the fishes must either migrate to warmer lat.i.tudes in winter, as some do, or withstand variously the cold, often freezing weather. Some fish can be frozen solid, and yet thaw out and resume active living. Some lie at the bottoms of deep pools through the colder periods, while many others, such as the minnows, chubs, and other kinds common in small streams, bury themselves in the mud, and lie dormant or asleep through the whole winter. On the other hand in countries where the long intense rainless summers dry up the pools, some fishes have the habit of burying themselves in the mud, which, with slime from the body, forms about them a sort of tight cement ball in which they lie dormant until the rains come. "Thus a lung-fish (called _Protopterus_), found in Asia and Africa, so completely slimes a ball of mud around it that it may live for more than one season, perhaps many; it has been dug up and sent to England, still enclosed in its round mud-case, and when it was placed in warm water it awoke as well as ever."

=Food-fishes and fish-hatcheries.=--Most fishes are suitable for food, though not all. Some are too small to be worth catching or too bony to be worth eating. Some of the larger ones, especially the sharks, are tough and rank. A few are bitter and in the tropics a number of species feed on poisonous coelenterates about the coral reefs, becoming themselves poisonous in turn. But a fish is rarely poisonous or unwholesome unless it takes poisonous food. Where fishes of a kind specially used for food gather in great numbers at certain seasons of the year, fishing is carried on extensively and with an elaborate equipment. Such fisheries, some of which have been long known, are scattered all over the world. Along the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean Sea, and on the coasts of Norway, France, the British Isles and j.a.pan are numerous great fishing-places. But "nowhere are there found such large fisheries as those along the northern Atlantic coasts of our own continent, extending from Ma.s.sachusetts to Labrador. Especially on the banks of Newfoundland are codfish, herring, and mackerel caught."

Among our fresh-water fisheries the great salmon fisheries of the Pen.o.bscot and Columbia rivers and of the Karluk and other rivers of Alaska are the best known. The whitefish of our Great Lakes is also one of the important food-fishes of the world.

In many places fishes are raised in so-called hatcheries, not usually for immediate consumption but for the purpose of stocking ponds and streams either in the neighborhood of the hatchery or in distant waters which the special species cultivated has not been able naturally to reach. The eggs of some fishes are large and non-adherent, two features which greatly favor artificial impregnation and hatching. In the hatcheries the eggs are put first into warm water, where development begins; they are then removed into cool water, which arrests development without injury, making shipment possible. The eggs of salmon and trout in particular can be sent long distances to suitable streams or ponds. The eggs of the shad have been thus carried from the East to the streams of California and trout have been distributed to many streams in our country which by themselves they could never have reached.

The salmon is a conspicuous example of those fishes which can be artificially propagated. The eggs of the salmon are large, firm, and separate from each other. If the female fish be caught when the eggs are ripe and her body be pressed over a pan of water the eggs will flow out into the water. By a similar process the milt or male sperm-cells can be procured and poured over the eggs to fertilize them. The young after hatching are kept for a few days or weeks in artificial pools, till the yolk-sacs are absorbed and they can take care of themselves. They are then turned into the stream, where they drift tail foremost with the current and pa.s.s downward to the sea. All trout may be treated in similar fashion, but there are many food-fishes which cannot be handled in this way. In some the eggs are small or soft, or viscid and adhering in bunches. In others the life-habits make artificial fertilization impossible. Such species are artificially reared only by catching the young and taking them from one stream to another. To this type belong the black ba.s.s, the sunfish, the catfish and other familiar forms.