156 College of Forestry 
Data on Stomach Contents of Fishes. 
Some years ago Forbes (1888, c, p. 11) wrote significantly 
concerning the Mollusea as food. ‘* The ponds and streams 
of the Mississippi Valley are the native home of mollusks of 
remarkable variety and number, and these form a feature of 
the fauna of the region not less conspicuous and important 
than its leading group of fishes. We might, therefore, reason- 
ably expect to find these dominant groups connected by the 
food relation; and consistently with this expectation, we 
observe that the sheepshead, the eatfishes, the suckers, and 
the dog-fish find an important part of their food in the mol- 
lusean forms abundant in the waters which they themselves 
most frequent.” This statement, so eminently true of the 
region deseribed by Forbes, is equally pertinent in relation 
to Oneida Lake, and the data to be presented abundantly in- 
dicates that many of its inhabitants are par excellence mol- 
lusk eaters. It is noteworthy that there is a close relation 
between the abundance of this life in the lake and its use by 
fish as food. 
METHODS OF OBTAINING DATA. 
The majority of the fishes examined had been preserved 
in formalin, About ten were fresh. Each fish was cut open 
on the under side from just behind the lower jaw to the 
anus. The whole digestive system was removed and the con- 
tents carefully removed, by cutting open the stomach length- 
wise and removing the contents ‘with needles, scalpel and 
tweezers, care being used not to break or damage the con- 
tents. In the ease of the intestine, the contents were removed 
by cutting lengthwise, or by carefully rolling the contents 
out by way of the anal end. The contents of both stomach 
and intestine were carefully and minutely examined by 
means of a Leitz binocular compound miscroscope, powers 1p 
to 100 diameters being used. The different classes of food, 
—mollusean, insect, crustacean, ete.,— were separated, their 
percentages estimated and the species determined. The 
stomach contents have been preserved and now form a part 
