138 FISHES OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



The spawning season is in spring, and the spawning grounds are the smaller 

 tributaries of streams or the streams flowing into lakes. At Toxaway, the U. S. 

 Bureau of Fisheries has recently begun spawn-taking operations, the brood fish 

 being caught while running into the feeders of the artificial lakes. Spawning 

 begins when the fish are 2 or 3 years old, and continues until they reach a con- 

 siderable age. The eggs are .2 inch or a little more in diameter, and from 500 to 

 3,000 are desposited by a single fish. 



This is an excellent food fish, and one of the best of all the trouts. In its 

 native waters it has no superiors and few equals as a game fish, but in the east it 

 has deteriorated in this respect and in general is inferior to the brook trout. 



Order INIOMI. The Lantern-fishes. 



Family SYNODONTID.E. The Lizard-fishes. 



Chiefly small shore fishes, with elongate, cylindrical or little compressed 

 body; cycloid scales; straight lateral line; very wide mouth provided with sharp 

 teeth on the jaws, palatines, and tongue; an exceedingly long premaxillary bone 

 which forms the entire margin of the upper jaw and conceals the rudimentary 

 maxillary; branchial membranes not united or only slightly so and free from 

 isthmus; short or obsolete gill-rakers; small or absent air-bladder; short dorsal 

 fin; small adipose dorsal; forked caudal. 



The typical and commonest genus, Synodus, is the only one as yet repre- 

 sented in the North Carolina fauna, although Trachinocephalus will no doubt 

 eventually be found; this genus differs from Synodus in having a stouter body 

 and a short, blunt, compressed head. The only American species, Trachino- 

 cephalus myops, the ground spearing, is common from South Carolina southward 

 and has been taken on a number of occasions as far north as Massachusetts. 



Genus SYNODUS Gronovius. Lizard-fishes. 



The lizard-fishes are numerous in warm waters in various parts of the world. 

 They are small or moderate in size, and have little food value. They lie on or 

 partly buried on shoal sandy shores and are very voracious. They are distin- 

 guished by an elongate body nearly circular in cross-section; a depressed head; 

 a pointed snout, a wide mouth, with a strong premaxillary more than half length 

 of head, and a very complete and formidable set of teeth (2 series of large, knife- 

 like teeth on premaxillaries, the larger inner row depressible; a band of similar 

 teeth on lower jaw and another on palatine; and an area of strong, depressible 

 teeth on tongue); a rather large eye placed above level of snout; spinous gill- 

 rakers; branchiostegals 12 to 16; small cycloid scales on body, cheeks, and 

 opercles, top of head naked; a long blind sac connected with stomach and numer- 

 ous pyloric coeca; anal opening much nearer to base of caudal than to base of 

 ventrals; a short dorsal fin placed well forward; a small adipose .fin over anal; a 

 short anal; rather small pectorals; moderately large ventrals, with inner rays 

 longest; and a narrow, forked caudal. A number of species known from both 



