62 NEiW YORK KTATK MUSEUM 



mon " in western hotels. The names are derived from the re- 

 markable snout, which is produced into a long spatula-shaped 

 process, covered above and below with an intricate network and 

 with very thin flexible edges. The head and snout form nearly 

 half of the entire length of the fish. The fish can not be con- 

 founded with anything else in the waters of the United States. 

 There is in China a similar fish, which, however, belongs to a 

 different genus. 



Distribution. The single species of American paddlefish is 

 confined to the Mississippi valley. It inhabits only the larger 

 streams in Pennsylvania. It is common in the Allegheny and 

 the Monongahela rivers. 



Size. The paddlefish grows to a length of 6 feet, and a weight 

 of 30 pounds or more. 



Habits. The species frequents muddy bottoms, but does not 

 feed on the mud and slime, as many persons have supposed. 

 The long snout is useful in procuring its food, which consists 

 chiefly of entomostracans, water worms, aquatic plants, leeches, 

 beetles and insect larvae. 



Prof. S. A. Forbes, director of the Illinois Laboratory of 

 Natural History, has published the first and most satisfactory 

 account of the feeding habits of this sharklike fish. He found 

 very little mud mixed with the food. Prof. Forbes was informed 

 by the fishermen that the paddlefish plows up the mud in feed- 

 ing with its spatulalike snout and then swims islowly backward 

 through the water. 



" The remarkably developed gill rakers of this species are 

 very numerous and fine, in a double row on each gill arch, and 

 they are twice as long as the filaments of the gill. By their 

 interlacing they form a strainer scarcely less effective than the 

 fringes of the baleen plates of the whale, and probably allow 

 the passage of the fine silt of the river bed when this is thrown 

 into the water by the shovel of the fish but arrests everything 

 as large as the cyclops. I have not found anything recorded 

 as to the spawning habits of the paddlefish. The young have 

 , the jaws and palate filled with minute teeth, which disappear 

 with age." 



