496 PARENTAL CARE AMONG FRESH-WATER FISHES. 



It is an eminently gTegarious fish and its scLools are sometimes very 

 large, but they are not equally large every year. Some years they may 

 be comj^aratively few and in others exceptionally abundant. In 

 many of the northern streams, W. C. Kendall (1902) testifies, they 

 occur "in such vast numbers as to be used for fertilizer'' and "as 

 food for cows and dogs, and even for men. The}^ were taken in 

 large numbers in the brush weirs used for catching small herring on 

 the coast of Maine, and in the same locality often become a nuisance 

 by clogging the nets of the swelt seiners.'' 



One instance illustrative of their occasional extraordinary num- 

 bers has been often quoted, but is as apt now as ever. In 1776 Pen- 

 nant claimed that " once in seven or eight years amazing shoals 

 appear in the Welland " Canal " and come up the river in the form 

 Ox a vast column. They are supposed to be the multitudes which 

 have been washed out of the fens by the floods of several years and 

 collected in some deep hole till, overcharged with numbers, they are 

 periodically obliged to attempt a change of place. The quantity is 

 so great that they are used to manure the land, and trials have been 

 made to get oil from them. A notion may be had of this vast shoal 

 by saying that a man employed by the farmer to take them has got 

 for a considerable time 4 shillings a day by selling them at a half 

 penny a bushel." 



This account has been quoted as unparalleled, but several notices in 

 American publications come nearly, if not fully, up to it. In the 

 Canadian Annual Report on Fisheries for 1803 (p. 61) it is reported, 

 that the three-spined stickleback or i)icassou was " caught in great 

 quantities in the small rivers, brooks, and harachois of Magdalen 

 Islands, where it is used as food for cattle and as manure," and that 

 " -too barrels Avere caught " in 1862 " in the harachois of Basque 

 Harbor " alone. Four hundred barrels were also caught in 1866 and 

 sold as manure at 25 cents per barrel, but in 1867 the catch was 

 smaller (150 barrels) and prices advanced to " Is. 3d. per barrel."" 



Sticklebacks are very ^'oracious and almost omnivorous, their 

 rapacity being only limited by their size. The eggs and fry of 

 other fishes suffer severely from their attacks, but with apparently 

 equal relish they take worms, the minute entomostracan crustaceans, 

 the larvcTp and imagines of insects, and small mollusks. But they do 

 not refrain from attacking fishes much larger than themselves. " Mr. 

 Mable, at the Weston-super-Mare Museum, had some three-spined 

 sticklebacks in an aquarium, and some roach, Leuciseus rutilvs, were 

 added. With this invasion the prior inhabitants were dissatisfied, 

 but not frightened, as they forthwith attacked the newcomers, bit- 

 ing at them anywhere until they became thoroughly cowed. These 

 little tyrants were observed to place themselves in front of the roach. 



o Fisheries Appendices for 1866 (p. 42) and 1867 (p. 34), 



