VIVIPAROUS FISH. 107 



the year in the Bay of San Francisco than at 

 Vancouver Island. I think not. That they are 

 taken earlier in the year is simply due to the 

 fact, that the fishermen at San Francisco have 

 better nets and fish in deeper water, than the 

 Indians, and consequently take the fish earlier. 

 The habit of the fish is clearly to come into 

 shallow water when the period arrives for pro- 

 ducing its live young ; and from the fact that 

 some of these fish are occasionally taken at all 

 periods of the year, I am induced to believe that 

 they do not in reality migrate, but only retire 

 into deeper water along the coast, there to 

 remain during the winter months, reappearing 

 in the shallow bays and estuaries in June and 

 July, or perhaps earlier, for reproductive pur- 

 poses; here they remain until September, and 

 then entirely disappear. 



They swim close to the surface in immense 

 shoals, and numbers are very craftily taken by 

 the Indians, who literally frighten the fish into 

 their canoes. At low-tide, when a shoal of fish 

 is in the bay, or up one of those large inlets that 

 intersect the coast-line, the savages get the 

 fish between the bank (or the rocks, as it may 

 be) and the canoe, and then paddle with all their 

 might and main among the terror-stricken 



