312 Roosevelt Wild Life Anmds 



'24; Kendall and Goldsborough, 'oS, '09; LaRue. '16: Leathers.' 11; Mavor, '15; 

 Nash, '08; Osburn, '14; Pearse, '21; Reighard, "15, '20; Smith and Bean, "98; 

 Stewart, '26; Wilson, '02, '04, '19. 



Hypentelium nigricans LeSueur. Hog Sucker, Stone-roller, Hammer- 

 head Sucker. Three specimens of this sucker were found in the Oneida Lake 

 region, one from Chittenango Creek and two from the Brewerton market. It is 

 apparently scarce in the lake, yet its presence may easily be overlooked for it is 

 difficult to capture by net and difficult to see in the water. It is a unique fish, 

 having a very large head, expansive pectoral fins, and a comparatively small, dis- 

 tinctly tapered body which is blotched, making the fish very inconspicuous on the 

 stony bottoms of streams. Goode ('03, p. 435) calls it a singular and almost 

 conical form. 



Breeding Habits and Life History. Little appears to be known of the breed- 

 ing habits of this species. It habitually frequents the usual spawning places of our 

 suckers, which are gravelly shallows of streams, so perhaps it does not change its 

 habitat for breeding in this region. Forbes and Richardson ('09, p. 88) say that 

 it ascends the swifter brooks in spring, doubtless to spawn. Wright and Allen 

 ('13, p. 4) give the breeding place as shallows of swifter brooks, and the time 

 as April to May. Bean ('02, p. 280) states that the spawning season is in the 

 spring, and that the young are abundant in small creeks as well as in rivers. 

 Reighard ('20, p. 21) notes that both sexes have pearl organs; and he found evi- 

 dence of spawning on May 4, 1904, near Ann Arbor, when six or eight males 

 were seen to group about one female, pressing close to her. No vibrations of the 

 body were noted. Hankinson ('19, p. 136) made similar observations in a stream 

 near Charleston, Illinois, where he saw two of these suckers, one chasing the other 

 and finally the two settling and resting for some minutes with their sides applied ; 

 but at another time in the same stream there were bodily movements on the part 

 of two apposed fish. 



Habitat. The Hog Sucker has a very restricted habitat and is fniirnied almost 

 entirely to the swift clear water over a rocky bottom. It avoids warm and 

 muddy water (Jordan and Evermann, '96, p. 181 ; Forbes and Richardson, '09, 

 p. 87; Goode, '03, p. 435.) It rarely occurs in lakes (Forbes, '86, p. 105). In 

 Winona Lake, Indiana, according to DeRyke ("22, p. 39), this sucker is usually 

 found over a mud bottom. 



Food. Forbes and Richardson ('09, p. i^J ) say: "It seeks its food in the 

 more rapid parts of streams, pushing about the stones upon the bottom and sucking 

 up the ooze and slime thus exposed, together with the insect larvae upon which it 

 mainlv depends for food. ... It is, in short, a molluscan feeder which has 

 become especially adapted to the search for insect larvae occurring in the rapid 

 water under stones . . . more than half of the food of the specimens exam- 

 ined consisting of a single form {Caeiiis) abundant under stones. A few aquatic 

 larvae of a gnat (Chironomus) and some other insect remains, with an insignifi- 

 cant ration of small bivalve mollusks, were the other elements of its food." Reigh- 

 ard ('20, p. 20) describes the method of feeding as follows: "When not breeding 

 it may often be seen feeding on the rapids of our brooks, creeks and smaller rivers. 

 In feeding, the fish puts its snont under a stone and roots it up or thrusts it side- 



