S44 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



From a cruel experiment I tried a year ago, I am satisfied that this 

 fish can live an unusually long time without food, and yet not lose 

 weight. A specimen, weighing just one ounce, was placed in a glass 

 jar, and at the end of eighty days was in good health and of the same 

 weight, as near as I could determine by using the same scale and weight 

 as at first. If there be truth in the supposition that fishes feed largely 

 upon animalcula in the water, then a fish kept in the same tank of 

 water that would gradually become darkened with the spontaneous 

 generation of an abundance of animals and plants, would indeed find 

 plenty of food, such as it was ; but in the case of my imprisoned cat- 

 fish, the water (pure spring-water) was changed every day, and I doubt 

 not was absolutely free from everything that could nourish the fish had 

 it been swallowed. As this and other species of catfish are well worthy 

 of cultivation as a valuable source of food, the fact of its " easy keep " 

 throughout winter should not be lost sight of. From the few experi- 

 ments I have made, and facts I have learned with reference to the 

 habits of the species, I do not hesitate to say that a pond of five acres 

 in extent, having a depth of from 3 to 6 feet, will sustain in excellent 

 condition cat-fish enough to yield, at least, 1,000 pounds annually of 

 most excellent food. 



The mullet {Moxostoma ohlongum) is one of the most abundant of our 

 fresh- water fishes, and the only sucker {Catostomoid) that remains in our 

 smaller streams in abundance throughout the year. As an article of 

 food, from May to November, it is certainly very indifferent, if not abso- 

 lutely worthless ; but, on the other hand, during the winter it is not 

 really so unsavory as is supposed, and for this reason there is in it a 

 source of cheap and abundant food of some value. No degree of cold 

 seems to affect the movements of this species, and hundreds can fre- 

 quently be seen under the ice moving slowly along the bed of the stream, 

 feeding upon the wilted remnants of pond-lily and splatter-dock plants. 

 One of the two specimens that I examined had in it a fragment of calamus- 

 root, and nearly thirty statoblasts of the common polyzoon, {Pectina- 

 tella magnifica.) This sucker has, I think, a value which has as yet 

 been overlooked, and that is as a source of food for black bass and other 

 carnivorous fishes. They deposit such enormous masses of eggs, and 

 in such shallow, weedy water, that the ova, until hatched, are protected 

 from the predaceous fishes ; afterward, as young fish, they swarm the 

 stream by thousands, and are readily snapped up by the bass. This 

 applies also to our common roach [Stilbe americana), which, to less 

 extent, braves the chilling waters of our streams throughout the winter, 

 and, in consequence, suffers from the persecutions of the three species of 

 pike {Esox reticiilatus, fasciatus^ porosus) inhabiting our streams. I 

 shall refer again, in more detail, to the value of Cyprinoids as sources ol 

 food for cultivated food-fishes in another communication. 



On the 22d of February, a bright, warm day, I placed a small net in 

 a brook fed by several springs, one of them largely charged with sul- 



