30 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



Poecilichthys is a chubby little fish, as compared 

 with the other darters. In its movements it is 

 awkward and ungraceful, though swift and savage 

 as a pike. One of the mildest of its tricks which 

 we have noticed, is this. It would gently put its 

 head over a stone and catch a water-boatman by 

 one of its swimming legs, release it, catch it again 

 and again release it, until at last the boatman, evi- 

 dently much annoyed, swam away out of its reach. 

 It will follow to the surface of the water a piece of 

 meat suspended by a string. It is more alert in 

 discovering this than a hungry sunfish or rock- 

 bass, and it can be led around like a pet lamb 

 by a thread to which is fastened a section of a 

 worm. 



A more beautiful fish than this — beyond ques- 

 tion the handsomest of them all — is the Blue- 

 breasted Darter {Nothonotiis camiiriis Cope). It is 

 a deep olive-green little fish, sprinkled over with 

 dots of carmine like a brook trout. Its breast is of a 

 deep ultramarine blue, and its fins gayly variegated 

 with blue, yellow, and crimson. But we hardly 

 learned to know it as an aquarium acquaintance ; 

 for we found it but twice, both times in the clearest 

 of water, and our specimens never survived con- 

 finement more than two or three hours. We can 

 only say of their habits that they died where other 

 darters lived, and that before they died all other 

 fishes seemed cheap and common beside them. 



The darter of darters is the Fan-tail (^Etheostoma 

 jlabcllare Rafinesque). Hardiest, wiriest, wariest 

 of them all, it is the one which is most expert in, 

 catching other creatures, and the one which most 



