Jan. 1, 3866.] 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



21 



FISH TATTLE. 



Eisn in Aquaria. — Since the communication at 

 page 284, vol. I., I have had an opportunity of seeing 

 two living - Sand Lances (Jmmodytcs lanced) in the 

 aquarium of Mr. A. II. Meyer, of Hamburg. He 

 has had them for some weeks, and at present they 

 are quite well, in a tank measuring about four feet 

 long, two feet broad, and eighteen inches high, with 

 about four inches of flue sand on the bottom. They 

 were got at Kiel, on the Baltic, and are in Baltic 

 sea water, which is much less salt than ordinary sea 

 water, the latter containing about 26 per mil of 

 soluble matters, while the former has only from 12 

 to 11 per mil, or even less. The fishes pass most 

 of their time buried out of sight in the sand, but as 

 they are known to be always at one particular spot 

 they cau be stirred up with a stick, when they swim 

 about for a few moments (generally with their heads 

 towards the light, and their noses to the hinder glass 

 side of the tank), with an uneasy, rapid, wriggling 

 motion, and presently they dash down into the sand 

 with such instantaneousr.ess that they disappear 

 before the subsidence of the little cloud of sand 

 which they raise in the act of vanishing. They have 

 not been seen to eat anything. Nothing else but 

 these two creatures are in the tank, and this, con- 

 nected with the facts that the tank is in a cool 

 cellar, with a current ever passing through the 

 water, explains the cause of success. My specimens 

 were obtained in warm weather. These fish Mould 

 not do with sea anemones, as they would be in- 

 evitably caught by the latter. The Smelt, too 

 {Osmerus eperlanus), 1 have now succeeded in keep- 

 ing better than formerly, but I have it in fresh water 

 not in sea water as before, and in a large, broad, 

 shallow, and cool tank, with a fountain always 

 playing in it. Under the same circumstances, I 

 also maintain the Schnapel {Coregonus oxyrhynchus), 

 a fish not found in Britain, and belonging to the 

 same genera as the Gwyniad, of Wales (Coregonus 

 laoaretus), and the Vendace, of Scotland [Coregonus 

 WiUoughbii). These two fishes, belonging to the 

 same family as the Salmon and the Trout, are 

 difficult to maintain in aquaria, and it is surprising 

 what an apparently small matter affects them. A 

 trifling variation of temperature, a little impurity, 

 or a difference between the oxygenating surfaces of 

 two tanks, is a matter of life or death to them. Bor 

 example, on placing some Schnapel and Smelt in a 

 300 gallon fresh-water tank, with a surface of water 

 of 25 square feet and a temperature of 60° F., the 

 fishes turned up immediately, and would have died 

 in a few minutes, but on being transferred to a tauk 

 of the same capacity, 300 gallons, but with a water 

 surface of 48 square feet, and a temperature of 55° 

 P., they revived immediately, and are still alive. 

 Yet the amount of water running into both tanks 



was exactly the same — ten gallons an hour. 

 Alford Lloyd, Zoological Gardens, Hamburg. 



-IF. 



Seized by a Pike. — I am indebted for the 

 following to Dr. Genzik :— "In 1829 I was bathing 

 in the swimming school at A'ienna with some fellow- 

 students, when one of them— afterwards Dr. Gouge, 

 who died a celebrated physician some years ago — 

 suddenly screamed out and sank. We all plunged 

 in immediately to his rescue, and succeeded in 

 bringing him to the surface, and finally, in getting 

 him up on to the hoarding of the bath, a pike was 

 fouud sticking fast to his right heel, which would 

 not loose its hold, but was killed, and eaten by all 

 of us in company the same evening. It weighed 

 32 lbs. Gouge suffered for months from the bite." — 

 Pennett's " Book of lite Pike." 



PiLcnARDs in Melbourne.— Prom politics to 

 pilchards is not a change of topics more sudden and 

 abrupt than was the arrival about a month ago in our 

 bay of immense shoals of this beautiful and nutrici- 

 ous little fish. They were a novelty in our waters, 

 and they came in such prodigious numbers that one 

 shoal is described (by the captain of a vessel sailing 

 through it) as not less than three miles long. They 

 were caught in tons, and sold about the streets of 

 Melbourne at sixpenee a bucket full. As the drought 

 has caused butchers' meat to be very dear at present, 

 these fish were welcomed as a timely supplement to 

 the table, and the butchers of Williams' Town 

 memorialized the borough council praying that the 

 fishermen should be compelled to use nets of a larger 

 mesh, that the new competion might be eased oft' to 

 the memorialists. During the last few days, how- 

 ever, these fish have been dying in millions in the 

 bay, and will probably soon disappear as suddenly 

 and mysteriously as they came— Melbourne Corre- 

 spondent of the Times. 



Short-finned Tunny {Thymus bracliypterus). — 

 This fish is a native of the Mediterranean, where, 

 perhaps, it is equally common with the Tunny, with 

 which it appears to have been confounded until 

 distinguished by the discriminating examination 

 of Baron Cuvier. But it appears to be less a 

 wanderer into the ocean than that fish, and there is 

 no record of its having been caught in the British 

 Seas until the summer of 1865, when an example 

 was discovered among the numbers of small mackerel 

 taken near Mevagissey, in Cornwall, in the drift 

 nets, and sent to me by Mr. M. Dunn, an intellegent 

 fisherman of that place. This first example was 

 obtained on the Sth of August, and it is worthy of 

 notice that within a week afterwards a specimen 

 was taken at Polperro, and .in September three 

 others at Mevagissev. — Couch's British Fishes. 



