INSECTS IN RELATION TO OTHER ANIMALS 283 



" The almost equally well-known slender water-skippers 

 (Hygrotrcchus) seem also completely protected 1>y their halm- 

 and activity from capture by fishes, only a single specimen oc- 

 curring in the food of all my specimens. Indeed, the true 

 water bugs (Hemiptera) were generally rare, with the excep- 

 tion of the small soft-bodied genus Corisa, which was taken by 

 one hundred and ten specimens, belonging to twenty-seven 

 species, most abundantly by the sunfishes and top minnows. 



" From the order Neuroptera [in the broad sense] fishes 

 draw a larger part of their food than from any other single 

 group. In fact, nearly a fifth of the entire amount of food 

 consumed by all the adult fishes examined by me consisted of 

 aquatic larvae of this order, the greater part of them larvae of 

 day flies (Ephemeridae), principally of the genus Hcxagcnia. 

 These neuropterous larvae were eaten especially by the miller's 

 thumb, the sheepshead, the white and striped bass, the common 

 perch, thirteen species of the darters, both the black bass, seven 

 of the sunfishes, the rock bass and the croppies, the pirate 

 perch, the brook silversides, the sticklebacks, the mud minnow, 

 the top minnows, the gizzard shad, the toothed herring, twelve 

 species each of the true minnow family and of the suckers and 

 buffalo, five catfishes, the dog-fish, and the shovel fish, 

 seventy species out of the eighty-seven which I have studied. 



" Among the above, I found them the most important food 

 of the white bass, the toothed herring, the shovel fish (fifty- 

 one per cent.), and the croppies; while they made a fourth or 

 more of the alimentary contents of the sheepshead (forty-six 

 per cent.), the darters, the pirate perch, the common sunfishes 

 (Lcpomis and Chcenobryttus) , the rock bass, the little pickerel, 

 and the common sucker (thirty-six per cent.). 



" Ephemerid larvae were eaten by two hundred and thirteen 

 specimens of forty-eight species not counting young. The 

 larvae of Hexagcnia, one of the commonest of the ' river 

 flies,' was by far the most important insect of this group, this 

 alone amounting to about half of all the Neuroptera eaten. 

 They made nearly one half of the food of the shovel fish, more 



