384 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



and these are the same that, associated with the banded 

 sunfish, are so common in all the weedy portions of Wat- 

 son's Creek. 



In a recent number of " Harper's Magazine " (Decem- 

 ber, 1883) Mr. C. F. Holder speaks of this sunfish as 

 lying " dormant till the coming spring." This does not 

 accord with my more recent observations. On the ap- 

 proach of cold weather, the fish that I have studied sim- 

 ply withdrew to deeper waters, and, wherever there is a 

 lively spring in the bed of the creek, there these fish 

 congregated in great numbers. Like the larger fishes of 

 the same creek, they find open water somewhere, and 

 there remain ; and nets set under ice, in the depths of 

 winter, show that very nearly all our fishes are active. 

 Even the delicate cyprinoids are " moving," for, in the 

 stomachs of pike caught in January, I have found re- 

 mains of "shiners" of several species. I believe the 

 hibernation of sunfish to be an exceptional occurrence, 

 rather than a rule. 



Like the preceding, the spotted sunfish is strictly 

 carnivorous, but does not feed upon the same forms of 

 minute life. This is shown by the results of my friend 

 Dr. Stokes's careful examination of the stomach-contents 

 of a series of specimens submitted to him. 



The examination of twelve adult specimens of spotted 

 sunfish resulted as follows : 



In every case the stomach was empty, but the intes- 

 tine contained tracheae, eyes, elytra, heads and chitinous 

 parts of small aquatic beetles. These were very numer- 

 ous ; also Pisidium sp. occasional ; several small univalve 

 mollusks ; a few Chironornus larvae ; occasionally a Daph- 

 nia and Cyclops ; and Gammarus sp. numerous. In the 

 very young spotted sunfish examined, there were found 

 Pisidium sp. occasionally ; many Daphnia and Chironomus 



