616 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



as white fishes, belong to the carp family. The smaller of these are 

 mostly used for feeding other fish. As they live on plants and refuse, 

 their food is easily supplied, and during spring and summer numerous 

 young fish are in a very short time developed from the eggs. 



18.— THE PERCH FAMILY, (PERCOLDEI.) 



The perch has a bright and beautiful color, and usually a wholesome 

 finely flavored flesh. The front rays of their dorsal fin are actually like 

 thorns, leaning backward like the bayonets of a column of marching 

 soldiers. 



To the perch proper (Perca) belongs the river-perch, (Perca fluviatUis,) 

 with light-red ventral and anal fins, found nearly everywhere in large 

 and small rivers and lakes. It is very voracious, readily takes the hook, 

 and spawns in March, April, and May in calm water on a reedy bottom. 

 A medium-sized female perch lays on an average 80,000 eggs per an- 

 num, which, pasted together in the shape of ribbons or lumps, stick to 

 stones and water-plants. Its weight seldom exceeds 1% pounds; but in 

 the Zeller Lake, (in the Pinzgau,) where it is found in very large num- 

 bers, it sometimes weighs from 4 to 5 pounds. 



To the genus Lucioperca belongs the Lucioperca sandra, called " Zan- 

 der" in North Germany, and in Hungary, when young, " Sziillo;" when 

 old, "Fogas." It lives in lakes, larger streams and their tributaries, keeps 

 at the bottom, in its voracity spares not even its own young, spawns 

 from April till the beginning of June in shallow places near the shore 

 where there are water-plants, thrives likewise in deep ponds, and 

 grows as rapidly as the pike, to which also in other respects it bears a 

 great similarity, and is, therefore, in Latin as well as in German, called 

 pike-perch. If well fed, it weighs in a few years about 25 pounds. This 

 fish was by an archbishop of Salzburg brought from the Neusiedler Lake 

 and placed in the Waller Lake. 



19. — THE STURGEON FAMILY, (ACIPENSERINI.) 



The species of this family have no bones like the fish that have 

 been spoken of, but instead, soft, flexible gristle. The sturgeon is for 

 some countries as important as the salmon; it is mostly found in Eastern 

 Europe, lives both in the sea and in large lakes, but at certain seasons 

 of the year ascends the rivers in large schools, never going beyond a 

 certain place. If supplied with good food, they reach a very large size; 

 specimens weighing from 800 to 1,000 pounds having frequently been 

 caught in the Danube in olden times. 



There are few other fishes which are of greater use to man than the 

 sturgeon. In Eussia, a large portion of the population is supported by 

 the sturgeon fisheries. Its flesh combines a certain firmness with excel- 

 lent flavor, and is even preferred to veal by many persons. They are 

 salted, dried in the sun, or smoked, and shipped to a great distance; the 



