i6 



AMERICAN FISHES. 



other locations the bass easily drives the wall-eye from his feeding 

 grounds." 



THE ZANDER. S. WCIOPEIir.K. 



They feed upon every kind of small fish, and do not even spare their own 

 offspring. In the sea-going rivers of Germany they prey largely upon the 

 smelt, and in our own waters upon the various small cyprinoids. Insects, 

 larvae, crawfish and worms are also devoured in great numbers, and even 

 irogs and snakes. 



Their eggs are from i to i}4 millimeters in diameter, and light golden 

 yellow in color, and are adhesive like those of the sea-herring, clinging 

 to stones, roots and the stalks of water plants where they are deposited at 

 a depth of from three to ten feet. They begin to spawn when less than 

 a pound in weight, and each female deposits from two to three hundred 

 thousand ova. This great fertility is serviceable, for no fresh water species is 

 more subject to the fatalities incident to the spawning season. After storms 

 the shores of lakes are said to be often bordered by windrows of the stranded 

 ova of the Pike-Perch. Dr. Estes well describes the destructive inroads ot 

 sturgeon, cat-fish and suckers upon the spawning beds in Lake Pepin. He 

 estimates that not one-fourth of the eggs remain to be hatched. 



Wenzel Horack, who has studied the habits of the Zander in Southern 

 Bohemia, finds that the time of spawning is so intimately connected with 

 the temperature of the water and the air that it sometimes begins in March, 

 though it usually occurs in April and May ; the season of oviposition con- 

 tinues through the summer and into October. In the north of Germany 

 the Zander spawns in May and June ; in southern Germany earlier, begin- 

 ing in April, Eckstrom states that in Sweden they spawn only at night. 



The fullest description of the breeding of the American species is that by 



