NATURAL HISTORY OF AMIA CALVA LINN^US. 65 



habits. With a view to determining how active the fish were at night, I have kept 

 them in captivity, and I have also watched them at different hours on their spawn- 

 ing grounds when light was no more than sufficient to enable their outlines to be 

 seen. My conclusions indicate that the dogfish is rather to be regarded as most 

 active at twilight. It takes the hook best shortly after sundown and during the 

 early morning, and at these times I have seen it exceedingly active under natural 

 conditions. In a general way the fish can hardly be described as shy. ... It is cer- 

 tainly less apt to notice one's approach than, for example, many common teleosts. 

 The general habitat of the fish varies greatly at different seasons of the year. In 

 summer it frequents deeper water; in spring it conies into the marshy shallows and 

 makes its way through reedy places where the water is scarcely deep enough to 

 cover its dorsal fin." In winter Ayers, as quoted by Whitman and Eycleshymer 

 ('97, p. 325), finds the fish in Oconomowoc Lake, Wis., "in schools closely huddled 

 together in the bottom of pockets or shallow depressions of the gravelly bed of the 

 lake, among the water-weeds. . . . They lie so close together that occasionally two 

 individuals are impaled on the fish-spear by one throw. When thus disturbed 

 they scatter from their resting-places, moving out a short distance to return quickly 

 after the first few disturbances." 



That Amia is a powerful and voracious fish, feeding chiefly on crayfish and small 

 fishes, has been abundantly shown in my own experience. That it remains in 

 hiding by day, usually in deeper water, is clear, since it is not then seen except in 

 the breeding season. As further evidence of this it may be added that during the 

 summer I have often seen it taken from deeper water on the hook in considerable 

 numbers in the daytime. Those who spear with the aid of the jacklight are wont 

 to select the darkest nights and those on which the water is unruffled. On such 

 nights I have seen Amia speared in large numbers throughout the summer, in 

 shallow water, where they had no doubt gone to feed. Amia is thus active and 

 feeding during the twenty-four hours, but seeks the gloom of the deeper water by 

 day and returns to shallow water at night. That it is rarely seen except by those 

 who spear at night is, in a measure, explained by the following from my note-book 

 under date of April 28, 1900: "This morning twenty-two Amias, which had been 

 for some time confined in a crate, were taken in the boat to a point where the water 

 was about a metre deep and the bottom of ooze carpeted with a very low growth 

 of aquatic plants, and there released. WTien placed in the water the fish at once 

 went to the bottom, approaching it obliquely with the snout lowest. Upon touch- 

 ing bottom with the snout, each with a quick movement of the caudal and a wave- 

 like movement of the dorsal instantly disappeared beneath the aquatic vegetation, 



