THE AMERICAN MUSEUM'S EXHIBIT OF FISHES 



By John Treadwell Nichols 



I do not want to give a paper but just to say a few 

 words to make you realize that we are interested in fishes 

 here at the museum and that we are doing work in fishes. 

 Of course, the primary work that a museum does is to make 

 and take care of collections, and the collections which appeal 

 most strongly to the mass of the people certainly are the 

 exhibition collections. 



Now dead fishes are very hard to exhibit properly. The 

 aquarium has solved admirably the problem of exhibiting 

 living fishes, and the museum is especially trying to show 

 those things which one cannot see so well in the living fishes 

 at the aquarium. We have so far found mounted skins 

 very unsatisfactory. However well it is prepared, except in 

 a few cases, you cannot get from a mounted skin a picture 

 of the fish as it really is. It looks painted. We have found 

 that models of many species give the idea better than 

 mounted skins, 



[Slide of a chinook salmon cast on exhibition.] This is 

 a model of the chinook salmon which has been prepared for 

 a number of years. We can now do better than that, but it 

 gives an idea of what such a model is like. 



[Slide of broad-sterned seine boats piled with seines, in 

 tow of a launch.] This is a picture of catching the salmon. I 

 was out in this region last summer. It is near the mouth of 

 the Columbia River and shows a seining expedition start- 

 ing ofif. 



[Slide of a fish-wheel near Bonneville, Oregon.] This is 

 one of the fish-wheels further up the river at the Cascades 

 where the water is swift. These wheels are located so that 

 the salmon may swim into them and be cauglit. It shows 

 pretty well the principle of a fish-wheel placed at the edge of 

 a river so that the fish following the shore, taking the easiest 



