412 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



During the summer of 1873, with the assistance of 

 an enthusiastic friend, I fished a spring-pond, some dis- 

 tance from home, and caught nearly one thousand speci- 

 mens of the silvery minnows. From them I made the 

 following notes with respect to their size and appear- 

 ance : The adult size is probably five inches, and what is 

 of much interest to the student is the fact that the intesti- 

 nal canal is so very much longer than the fish. On care- 

 ful measurement of over one hundred specimens, I found 

 this length to vary to a certain extent, though it was 

 never less than five and one fourth times the length of 

 the fish. Unlike the other cyprinoids, the peritonaeum 

 in this species is uniformly and intensely black. The 

 food of this shiner I supposed to be wholly vegetable 

 matter ; and this would seem to indicate that when the 

 digestive tract exceeds the total length of the fish, the 

 species is herbivorous, and when of the same length, or 

 little exceeding it, that it is omnivorous, or carnivorous. 

 This, however, I do not find to hold good. Recent ex- 

 aminations of the intestinal tract showed a very large 

 percentage of animal matter, and not nearly so much 

 mud as Professor Forbes reports in his examinations of 

 Illinois specimens. 



During the same summer I found a single specimen 

 of the blunt-nosed minnow. It was associated with the 

 preceding. The external differences were readily seen, 

 but, to make matters the more sure, I dissected it, and the 

 short digestive tract and silvery peritonaeum at once 

 showed that it was a wholly different species. 



Since then I have frequently found them in numbers 

 in the canal and in still water in the river. Many often 

 collect in the eddies about the larger projecting rocks, 

 and fall a prey to the hungry schools of perch and rock- 

 fish. My attention was first called to the abundance of 



