INSECTS IN RELATION TO OTHER ANIMALS 28 
ios) 
“The almost equally well-known slender water-skippers 
(Hygrotrechus) seem also completely protected by their habits 
and activity from capture by fishes, only a single specimen oc- 
curring in the food of all my specimens. Indeed, the true 
water bugs (Hemiptera) were generally rare, with the excep- 
tion of the small soft-bedied genus Corisa, which was taken by 
one hundred and ten specimens, belonging to twenty-seven 
species,—most abundantly by the sunfishes and top minnows. 
“From the order Neuroptera [in the broad sense] fishes 
draw a larger part of their food than from any other single 
group. In fact, nearly a fifth of the entire amount of food 
consumed by all the adult fishes examined by me consisted of 
aquatic larvee of this order, the greater part of them larve of 
day flies (Ephemeridz ), principally of the genus Hexagema. 
These neuropterous larve were eaten especially by the miller’s 
thumb, the sheepshead, the white and striped bass, the common 
perch, thirteen species of the darters, both the black bass, seven 
of the sunfishes, the rock bass and the croppies, the pirate 
perch, the brock silversides, the sticklebacks, the mud minnow, 
the top minnows, the gizzard shad, the toothed herring, twelve 
species each of the true minnow family and of the suckers and 
buffalo, five catfishes, the dog-fish, and the shovel fish,— 
seventy species out of the eighty-seven which I have studied. 
“ Among the above, I found them the most important food 
of the white bass, the toothed herring, the shovel fish (fifty- 
one per cent.), and the croppies; while they made a fourth or 
more of the alimentary contents of the sheepshead (forty-six 
per cent.), the darters, the pirate perch, the common sunfishes 
(Lepomis and Chenobryttus), the rock bass, the little pickerel, 
and the common sucker (thirty-six per cent. ). 
‘““Ephemerid larvee were eaten by two hundred and thirteen 
specimens of forty-eight species—not counting young. The 
larve of Hexagenia, one of the commonest of the ‘river 
flies,’ was by far the most important insect of this group, this 
alone amounting to about half of all the Neuroptera eaten. 
They made nearly one half of the food of the shovel fish, more 
