BRIEF NOTES ON FISHES. 365 



the young eels a-doin' in spring, when the stones are 

 black with 'em often." 



This is what I got from a professional fisherman, who, 

 to again use his words, " had fished these waters about 

 here for just fifty-seven years come next summer." 



I had based my impression, that the rock-fish bred " in 

 these waters," solely on the evidence of young, apparently 

 too feeble to have come from such a distance fully one 

 hundred miles ; but it seems they did come from some- 

 where down the river. At all events, they get into tide- 

 water creeks very early in life, and, as the old fisherman 

 told me and I have myself noticed, they remain here 

 pretty much the year round. Still, we can not call them 

 resident species in the sense of non-migratory fishes. 

 This they are not. Possibly no one individual remains 

 very long in one locality, but no sooner does one depart, 

 than another takes its place. Like the robins among our 

 birds, they are restless and wandering, but not method- 

 ically migratory. 



The food of the rock-fish consists exclusively of small 

 shiners or cyprinoids ; and it is the pursuit of them into 

 small streams that explains their presence in places where 

 one would hardly expect to find them. A rock-fish will 

 frequently "corner up" a small school of shiners, and 

 then pick them up as rapidly and with as great ease as a 

 fowl will pick grains of corn, and, while devouring the 

 luckless minnows, it will keep them all the time huddled 

 together in a small space. There is no cessation of this 

 murderous work while a shiner remains, for, after de- 

 vouring all that it is possible for it to eat, a mere love of 

 destruction keeps the rock-fish still at work. 



I once had a very favorable opportunity for watching 

 one of these fishes feed in this manner. It was of mod- 

 erate size, being about twelve inches in length. As near- 



