528 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



As my chief object in collecting the hellbenders was to obtain eggs 

 fcr embryological work (my hope being that the animals would spawn 

 in captivity) and as I had at first no idea as to when the spawning 

 season occurred, I started in pursuit of the creatures about the first of 

 February, tramping many weary miles through three feet of snow 

 and chopping numerous holes through the thick ice that covered French 

 Creek in which the hellbenders abound. Hand-lines, night-lines and 

 traps were tried again and again, but, though several specimens of 

 Necturus were caught, not a single Cryptohranchus was obtained until 

 the twenty-eighth of March, after the ice and snow had all disappeared 

 and several days of warm weather had slightly warmed the water. 

 Fishermen, generally, stated that 'alligators' could not be caught 

 until the ice had melted and the water had had time to warm slightly. 



Although the first specimens were caught during the last days of 

 March, it was not until nearly a month later that they could be 

 obtained in any numbers, and it was during May that they were most 

 abundant. About June 7, desiring to obtain a few more specimens, 

 I applied to the boys from whom I had been buying them, but, after 

 fishing for a week or more, they told me that the 'alligators' had 

 stopped biting, and I was unable to obtain the additional specimens 

 that I wanted. "Whether they usually cease taking food at this time 

 I am unable to say, but Mr. Chas. H. Townsend, of the New York 

 Aquarium, says* that they were caught by him in August, on hooks 

 baited with pieces of meat or fish heads. Most of the specimens I 

 obtained were caught in traps that had been set for fish, though many 

 were caught with hook and line, the disadvantage in the latter method 

 being that the hook was often caught so far down in the digestive tract 

 that it could not be extracted without seriously injuring the animal. 



The color of all the hellbenders, when first caught, was a more or 

 less uniform dirty black or greenish-brown with numerous irregular 

 dark spots on the dorsal side. Fishermen were occasionally heard to 

 speak of 'red alligators' but I never saw a hellbender that could, in 

 truth, be called red, though after they had been in captivity for a couple 

 of months many of them changed color very perceptibly, becoming a 

 more decided brown, sometimes with a decided greenish tinge and 

 sometimes with the dark spots, mentioned above, very pronounced. 

 It is possible that this change in color, in a state of nature, may 

 be very much more marked and that when the breeding season 

 arrives it may become an actual red, and serve as a sexual char- 

 acter. Judging from analogy, it would be supposed that these more 

 brilliantly colored individuals would be males, but such was not 

 the case. Of the specimens that I had under observation, nearly all 

 were females ; if this were true in a state of nature, it might be possible 



* American Naturalist, February, 1882. 



