VIVIPAROUS FISH. 107 
the year in the Bay of San Francisco than at 
Vancouver Island. I think not. That they are 
taken earlier in the year is simply due to the 
fact, that the fishermen at San Francisco have 
better nets and fish in deeper water, than the 
Indians, and consequently take the fish earlier. 
The habit of the fish is clearly to come into 
shallow water when the period arrives for pro- 
ducing its live young; and from the fact that 
some of these fish are occasionally taken at all 
periods of the year, I am induced to believe that 
they do not in reality migrate, but only retire 
into deeper water along the coast, there to 
remain during the winter months, reappearing 
in the shallow bays and estuaries in June and 
July, or perhaps earlier, for reproductive pur- 
poses; here they remain until September, and 
then entirely disappear. 
They swim close to the surface in immense 
shoals, and numbers are very craftily taken by 
the Indians, who literally frighten the fish into 
their canoes. At low-tide, when a shoal of fish 
is in the bay, or up one of those large inlets that 
intersect the coast-line, the savages get the 
fish between the bank (or the rocks, as it may 
be) and the canoe, and then paddle with all their 
might and main among the terror-stricken 
