50 



among the larger species ; and the darters, the brook silversides, 

 the stickleback, the mud minnows, the top minnows, the stone- 

 cats, and the common minnows generally, among the smaller 

 kinds. Our eight specimens of the toothed herri^ig had taken 

 no fishes whatever ; while our nineteen examples of the pirate 

 perch had eaten only two per cent. 



Rough-scaled fishes with spiny fins were eaten by the 

 miller's thumb, the common pike, the wall-eyed pike, the large- 

 mouthed black bass, the croppies, the dog-fish, the common 

 perch, the burbot, the bull-head, the common sunfish {Leponiis 

 pallidus), the small-mouthed black bass, the grass pickerel, the 

 gar, and the mud-cat (Leptops). Among these, the common 

 perch and the sunfishes were most frequently taken — doubtless 

 owing to their greater relative abundance — the perch occurring 

 in the food of the burbot, the large-mouthed black bass, and the 

 bullhead ; and the sunfishes in both species of wall-eyed pike, 

 the common pike, the gars, pickerel, bullheads, and mud-cat. 

 Black bass were taken from the common pike (Esox), the wall- 

 eyed pike (Stizostedion), and the gar. Croppie and rock bass 

 I recognized only in the pike. Even the catfishes with their 

 stout, sharp, and poisoned spines were more frequently eaten 

 than would have been expected — taken, according to my notes, 

 by the wall-eyed pike, both black bass, and a fellow species of 

 the family, the goujon or mud-cat. 



The soft-finned fishes were not very much more abundant, 

 on the whole, in the stomachs of other species, than those with 

 ctenoid scales, spiny fins, and other defensive structures, an 

 unexpected circumstance which I cannot at present explain, 

 because I do not not know whether it expresses a normal and 

 fixed relation, or whether it may not be due to human inter- 

 ference. 



Only the catfishes seem to have acquired defensive struc- 

 tures equal to their protection, the predatory apparatus of the 

 carnivorous fishes having otherwise outrun in development 

 the protective armor of the best-defended species. 



Among the soft-finned species the most valuable as food for 

 other fishes is the gizzard shad, Dorosoma, this single fish being 

 about twice as common in adults as all the minnow family taken 



