42 BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



no relation to the apparent fecundity of the fish. Even 

 before that, it was by no means very common. Growing to a 

 great size and remaining several months in the rivers and 

 estuaries, it might be thought that the food supply would 

 prove inadequate to the wants of large schools, and so check 

 rapid multiplication. From evidence afforded by some 

 stomachs examined, it does not appear that much food is 

 consumed at this time ; so that some more general and far- 

 reaching cause must be operating to produce this effect. 

 Being ground-feeders, and frequenting bottoms affording con- 

 cealment to certain predaceous fish, it would seem that many 

 must fall victims to those strange marine harpies — the lamp- 

 reys {Petroinyzo7i marinus, Linn.) Indeed the natives of the 

 Miramichi, as well as of the St. John, account for the leap- 

 ing of the sturgeon on the ground that it is trying to get rid 

 of its tormentors. Cod-fish, too, are not unfrequently found 

 with lampreys attached to them, and even salmon sometimes 

 share the same fate. Squirrel-hake taken through the ice 

 near the mouth of the Kennebecasis frequently have two or 

 three small lampreys from six to twelve inches long clinging 

 to a single fish. Once a lamprey has attached itself to a 

 young sturgeon by means of the circular cupping-glass-like 

 mouth, the latter was doomed, for it could not long survive 

 the operation of those saw-like teeth and loss of blood. 

 Indeed the writer has seen many sturgeons which had seem- 

 ingly been killed in this way, as the circular wound on the 

 side just behind the gill indicated. These eels are quite 

 common in our coast waters, and ascend the rivers in large 

 numbers. 



