SILURUS. 187 



the individuals of the genus silurus are known in 

 New England. In the great western rivers the 

 cat-fish, often eight feet in length, is nothing more 

 nor less than a mammoth horn-pout. Writers 

 speak of them as the largest fresh water fishes of 

 Europe. They are slow, sluggish, and seem to 

 have a predilection for dark, muddy waters, in 

 which vermin abound. 



Few exceed a foot in length, in the northern 

 states ; oftener they are much short of that. In 

 bays where, by the rise of rivers, they get intro- 

 duced, they breed very fast, and bushels of them 

 are sometimes raked out of very small pools. 



They are exceedingly tenacious of life ; their 

 vitality is so low, and their constitution so pecu- 

 liar, that they may be partially frozen without de- 

 struction. The past winter the writer, by acci- 

 dent, left two pouts in a small tin pail, in an upper 

 apartment of the City Hall, in the month of De- 

 cember, during a severely cold night ; and in the 

 morning they were found frozen closely in the 

 ice.- 



After being exposed to the warmth of a 

 stove with reference to emptying the vessel, to 

 our utter amazement the fishes revived, and are 

 now the tenants of a cistern in Battery March 

 Street. 



It was suggested by Bloch that the loche, 

 placed in a vessel of water, would be a very good 



