270 



HARDWICKE'S SCIEN C E -GO S S IP. 



opeuod jaws. Thea there was a coiimiotiou ! The 

 gar rushed, with the rapidity of h'ghtuiug, upon the 

 uususpectiug chub. He seized him midway between 

 Lead and tail. The teeth of the captor had taken 

 so Arm a hold upon the chub, that he could not 

 disengage them ; and as the chub was not instantly 

 killed, of course he squirmed terribly, to the very 

 evident annoyance of the gar. 



With the mangled chub in his jaws, the gar moved 

 slowly out into the clear water, and we knew that 

 our time to have a chance at the gar had come. 

 Piaising up one arm as far as we could reach, and 

 rising up on our knees and one elbow, we measured 

 the distance between the spear-point and the fish 

 with a glance, and then, trusting to the little aim 

 that we could get, thrust the spear home, witli a 

 force that would have done credit to a prehistoric 

 hunter. 



The motion of the shaft, which latter we had 

 yery wisely secured by a cord to the boat, told us 

 we had not struck in vain, — the fish was indeed 

 ours ; and oh, but we were proud as we learned the 

 result ! Old Stone Age times came back again in 

 very truth ! The little boat was a rude " dug-out," 

 and the great blue herons and screaming kingfishers 

 seemed more appropriate than ever to the still, 

 wild, unaltered, venerable Crossweelssen Creek. 

 But the gar did not appreciate the poetry of the 

 time and circumstances as we did, and with the 

 stone spear securely fastened in his side and spine, 

 he made off as best he could ; the only instance of 

 a fish swimming with his back broken that we ever 

 saw. Soon he came to a halt, however, and reach" 

 ing the spot, we made a second thrust with greater 

 care, and again transfixed him with the convex- 

 sided spear. How madly he stared at us when we 

 iinally secured him ! As we tried to draw him from 

 the water to the boat, he gave one mad dash at our 

 arms, and caught a stick that was floating by. His 

 teeth were buried full length in the wood ; and the 

 gar died, holding on to the branch. Just as he was, 

 except that we drew out the spears, we took his 

 picture; and here it is. 



The fish measured just five feet in length; the 

 head being exactly one-third of the total length, 

 exclusive of the tail. The head is the most notice- 

 able part of the animal. The mouth is two-thirds 

 of the whole length of the head; and its length is 

 just eight times greater than the width. Such jaws 

 remind one of an alligator's ; but re:dly, those of 

 the gar are even more terrible. On eitlver side of 

 the upper and lower jaws we find, by actual 

 count, one hundred and fifty very sharp, slender 

 teeth, with their points slightly inclined toward the 

 throat ; or, in all, six hundred needle-like teeth, 

 and every one equally sharp as the best needle 

 ever made. Nor are these all the teetli that the 

 gar has; for on looking a little more closely, we 

 find on either side of the lower jaw two parallel 



rows of very minute teeth, which are nearly uniforiii 

 in size, and very sharp. It is impossible to count 

 them, but we judged of their numbers thus: — the 

 rovi^s are each nineteen inches long, and there are 

 four of them, or seventy-six inches in all. The 

 number on one inch, as near as we could tell, was 

 sixty-five; or four thousand nine hundred and 

 forty teeth. In the upper jaw are two rows oi 

 similar teeth, each sixteen inches in length, giving 

 two thousand and eighty more; or in all, seven 

 thousand six hundred and twenty teeth in both jaws. 

 It is not to be wondered at that the chub did not 

 escape when once fairly caught in such jaws as we 

 have described. 



Tlie gar {Lepidosteiis osseus) is, with the sturgeon, 

 the only ganoid fish to be found in the waters of 

 this State ; and as he comes into shallow waters 

 and quiet streams that attract the zoological fisher- 

 man more than does the deep river, where the 

 sturgeon alone is met with now ; so he seems the 

 onl?/ link between an earlier geological period and 

 our own times. He seems to have escaped the 

 innumerable influenoes of natural selection, and is 

 now just as he was before the first Red Indian 

 wandered along the shores of our river, or floated 

 on its bosom in a rude canoe; and how many 

 centuries since then, who can say? It seemed the 

 proper thing to do — to use, if we could, these hand- 

 some jasper spears to capture this "remnant of 

 archaic times ;" and we believe our modus operandi 

 varied little from the method of the prehistoric 

 fishermen, who, centuries ago, hunted them as 

 eagerly as did we a few days ago, — when Cross- 

 weelssen Creek was innocent of bridges, and bore 

 upon its bosom only the rude canoes of a myste- 

 rious Stone Age people. 



MONSTROUS PLANTS IN 1S73. 



T HAVE always supposed that a very wet season 

 -^ such as the memorable one we have just ex- 

 perienced, must have a great influence in causing 

 abnormal growth in plants ; |but I have certainly 

 seen fewer monstrosities during this year than 

 usual. Even the White and the Alsike Clovers, 

 which are always more or less given to eccentricities, 

 have been, if anything, less subject to prolificatiou 

 than they often are. 



Scarlet Geraniums, however, have been very 

 proliferous. The wet weather has had a 

 decided influence upon them, causing them to 

 produce a great quantity of leaves and very few 

 flowers ; so that t!ie geranium beds have not been 

 by any means as brilliant as usual ; and I think this 

 has been remarked everywhere. But when the 

 flowers did put in an appearance with the mode- 

 rately fine weather in August, a great proportion of 

 them were proliferous, producing a leaf or two below 



