28 FISHES OF ILLINOIS 



The flesh of the shovel-nosed sturgeon is now regularly marketed, 

 being cut into steaks or smoked. At Louisville, where this fish is 

 abundant and is taken in seines, the eggs are mixed with those of 

 the paddle-fish and used for caviar. The shovel-nosed sturgeon 

 fishery of the Mississippi and its tributaries yields now about 

 700,000 lb annually. The catch in the Mississippi on our border 

 varies from 50,000 to 100,000 lb. The Illinois River catch was 

 18,000 tb in 1899, but has since rapidly declined, and this fish is 

 seldom taken now so far north as Havana. 



Genus PARASCAPHIRHYNCHUS Forbes & Richardson 



(white sturgeon) 



Snout broad and shovel-shaped; caudal peduncle long and flattened 

 and completely armored; lips as in Scaphirhynchus ; spiracles wanting; 

 pseudobranchias obsolescent; gill-rakers 2- or 3 -pointed; ribs 20 or 21; 

 air-bladder 8 in length of head and body. Mississippi and Missouri 

 rivers. One species. 



PARASCAPHIRHYNCHUS ALBUS Forbes & Richardson 



(white sturgeon *) 



Forbes & Richardson, '05, Bull. 111. State Lab. Nat. Hist., VII, 37-44. 



Body comparatively short; depth 7.5 to 9 in length of head and body; 

 distance from gill-cavity to front of dorsal fin 2.5 in length; length 3 to 

 4 ft.f Color very light, the upper parts bluish gray in life, the lower parts 

 of the sides and belly shading from very light gray to almost milky white. 

 Head longer and somewhat more depressed than in 5. platorhynchus, 

 2.9 to 3.2 in length; width of rostrum 2.5 to 2.9 in its length, the snout 

 narrower and more pointed than in Scaphirhynchus ; interorbital space 

 3.7 to 4.2 in head; eye very small, 8.3 to 10 in distance between orbits; 

 mouth larger than in Scaphirhynchus, its width 1.4 to 1.6 in the greatest 

 width of the rostrum; papillae of the four clusters of the lower lip re- 

 duced to a few flattened scallops at the hinder margin of the lappet : bar- 

 bels doubly pectinated on the anterior edge, the posterior pectinations 

 obsolete or wanting, the inner barbels 1.7 to 2.9 in length of outer; gill- 

 membranes meeting in a full and deep and rather sharp angle, the mem- 



* This fish is distinguished as the "white stiirgeon" by the Mississippi River 

 fishermen who are acquainted with it, the common shovel-nose {Scaphirhynchus 

 platorhynchus), which is of a yellowish brown color, being known by them usuallj' 

 as the "switch -tail," in allusion to its long caudal filament. 



t Our largest specimen of this species measures 43 i^ inches from tip of snout to 

 base of caudal, its weight being 9f fb. Mr. H. L. Ashlock, of Alton, says that he 

 has seen specimens 4^ ft. in length, with an estimated weight of 15 to 25 tb. 



