FISH AND FISHING IN BRITISH GUIANA. 239 



A species of Myletes, known as the " morocot," and very abundant in the rivers of 

 the northwest district of Guiana, has recently become the subject of a small curing 

 industry, and this might be extended, with enormous advantages, to other species. 

 The lack of enterprise in the prosecution of such industries is certainly deplorable, 

 though considering the ease with which the wants of the common people can be 

 supplied under such favorable tropical conditions as exist in Guiana, it can hardly 

 be remedied. When men, women, and children, with but a fish-hook and the 

 commonest ground bait, cau secure even from the canals and trenches in the town 

 and the immediate neighborhood more than a sufficient supply of fish for their own 

 requirements, the difficulty of the problem can hardly be removed. 



To the ichthyologist a considerable degree of interest attaches to the subject of 

 fish in Guiana, the more especially in that so little research has ever been prosecuted 

 in this direction. Since the work of the Schomburgks, and the publication of the 

 "Reisen in British Guiana," and the two volumes in the Magazine of Natural History 

 series, no detailed attempt has been made to work up the subject, though various 

 descriptions of fishes from Guiana have been published at different times. An inter- 

 esting field for work here lies practically untouched. Hundreds of species that fre- 

 quent the estuarine reaches, the canals and trenches, the sheltered and open savannah 

 creeks, the distant forest streams, and the upper reaches of the rivers in the various 

 parts of the country, are practically unknown, and yet await the description of the 

 naturalist and the illustration of the artist. 



Interesting as are the relations of distribution of the great groups — as, for instance, 

 the extreme development in size and number, both as to species and individuals, of 

 families such as the Siluridce and Characinidce as contrasted with paucity in others, as 

 the Gyprinidce, special interest is attached to many individual forms, of which the 

 electric eel (Gymnotus electricus), the river stingray (Trygon hystrix), the barker and 

 paruarima (Hem.Uioptcrus oniatus), the four-eyes (Anableps tetrophthalmus), and the 

 common hassar (Gallichthys littoralis), may be mentioned. 



The electric eels are common both in the higher and lower reaches of the rivers, 

 and especially in certain parts of the estuary of the Essequibo, where they are 

 frequently caught in the seine of the fisherman. The river rays too are common in 

 the higher parts of the rivers, where extensive sand and mud flats abound, the colors 

 of which they so much resemble as to be hardly distinguishable in the shallow waters. 

 The wounds from the poison spines of these fishes are peculiarly dreaded by the river 

 people, owing to the difficulty in healing the intense ulceration resulting from them. 



The paruarima inhabits the upper reaches of the rivers and is remarkable for the 

 peculiarly loud grunts or barks which it makes, and which evidently are intensified 

 by the greatly disproportionate size of the head and thoracic portion. The peculiar 

 division across the eyes of Anableps is too well known to require description ; so marked 

 is this development, however, that its common name, "four-eyes," would appear to be 

 peculiarly appropriate. These* fishes are met with in astonishing numbers all along 

 the estuarine mud flats and creek mouths, and at low water especially will be found 

 feeding along the courses of all the little mud rills over the exposed flats, from which 

 they rush, on disturbance, with rustling noise to the water, where they can be seen 

 cresting the surface in all directions — a great part of the head and even the body being- 

 exposed, projecting above the water, as they propel themselves vigorously forward 

 with the tail and hinder part of the body. 



