38 



SHORT-NOSED STURGEON 



Several species of Gar Pikes, distantly related to the sturgeons.occur 

 in fresh waters outside our limits and one of these, the Long-nosed Gar, 

 occasionally occurs within fifty miles of New York. Gars are sluggish, 

 armor-clad, piratical fishes. Their long cylindrical bodies -lie motion- 

 less, balanced, in still water, or drive forward suddenly with great 

 velocity to seize some luckless fish that has wandered within range. 

 Their jaws are hard and elongate, armed with formidable teeth; the tail 

 fin, which does the propelling, is rounded but somewhat unsymmetrical, 

 longer above; and gars may always be recognized by their peculiar 

 bony diamond-shaped scales very regularly placed, divided one from 

 another by grooves. In the Long-nosed Gar, the distance from the eye 

 to the tip of the narrow, beak-like snout is more than twice the length 

 of the rest of the head. 



III. CATFISH AND CARP 

 (Ostariophysi) 



Catfish and allies of the Carp are with few exceptions fresh-water 

 fishes. The latter swarm in the lake and river systems of the northern 

 continents. The former are most abundant in South America where 

 many very peculiar ones have been evolved. All our catfishes are of 

 the same general type, with large blunt heads, the transverse mouth 

 surrounded with whisker-like barbels, the skin soft and scaleless, the 

 back and breast fins armed each with a spine. Behind the back fin is a 

 small fleshy adipose fin. This adipose is, in all but two, short, rounded 

 and free behind, but in the Stone Catfish and Mud Catfish it is keel- 

 like; in the former comparatively high, and continuous with the much 

 rounded tail fin. in the latter lower, with a shallow notch marking it off 

 but not separating it from the slightly rounded tail fin. Both are of 

 small size, the former five, the latter eight inches, and inhabit the bot- 

 toms of small brooks. They secrete a poison which causes the wound 

 from their breast fin spines to resemble the sting of a wasp. 



Two species of salt-water catfish sometimes occur with us in the 

 summer; both have forked tails, six instead of eight barbels as in the 

 fresh-water forms, and are more or less dark gray above, white below. 



