252 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 



growth/' and in ten days the fish will be dead, with 

 great inflamed patches below the skin where the fungus 

 has rooted into the flesh. 



In the first stages of this trouble the fungus can be 

 killed by keeping the fish in salt water for a week or 

 two, but when the roots penetrate below the skin and 

 attack the muscle there is no remedy known at present. 

 In the old New York Aquarium, Broadway and Thirty- 

 fifth street, New York, 1876-79, I tried salicylic acid, 

 borax, boracic acid and alum, separately and combined, 

 with no effect on the mascalonge and other fishes in- 

 jured in transit. The last three things named are dead- 

 ly to fish if not carefully used, and I went so far as to 

 bandage the fish and put it in a trough where it could 

 not turn, and then apply the remedies behind its mouth 

 and gills, saturating the bandage, but found nothing as 

 good as salt and clean soil. By "clean soil" I mean 

 earth from the country, and not city mud. All trout 

 streams have more or less soil washed into them at 

 times, even to rendering the water opaque, but it 

 never injures trout, on the contrary it does them good 

 in freeing them from external parasites. 



A formidable external parasite common to most 

 fishes is the lamprey in its different species. These 

 animals are often miscalled Clamper eels" and ''lamprey 

 eels," but they are not remotely related to the eel, or 

 even in the class pices, which contain the fishes, where 

 the eel is entitled to a place. They are in the class 

 cyclostomi, and are nearer worms than fish, except that 

 they have a soft backbone. Jordan, "Manual of the 

 Vertebrates," says of them: "Skeleton cartilaginous; 

 skull imperfect, not separate from vertebral column ; 

 no jaws ; no limbs ; no ribs ; no shoulder girdle 

 nor pelvic elements; gills in the form of fixed sacs, six 



