386 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



numerous. They are worth angling for, if all fight as did 

 the only one I ever caught. 



There is yet another fish that I class, for convenience, 

 with the sunfish, simply because I usually find them 

 when looking for " sunnies," though in fact it belongs to 

 a very different family. It is the " pirate," or spineless 

 perch, which, by the way, I never expect to find, and 

 which I certainly never have found, when on a regular 

 hunt for them. That they are always in the deeper 

 ditches I am certain, but they can easily dodge a scoop- 

 net, and all day long they hide in such inaccessible nooks 

 that they are safe. It was only by accident that I ever 

 have bagged them, and so, with a light heart, I make a 

 place for every such one in my aquarium, and sit down 

 to watch how the ill-tempered fellow behaves in confine- 

 ment. They are well named " pirates," as they are among 

 minnows w r hat shrikes are among sparrows, and are more 

 pitiless even than the pike. 



Recently I find the correctness of this view questioned 

 by Professor Forbes, of Illinois, who has made many 

 exhaustive studies of the food of fishes. He says my 

 specimens " were doubtless forced to feed so largely upon 

 fishes for want of food more natural to them, since, in 

 their native haunts, fishes make but a small percentage 

 of their ordinary food." As a matter of fact, while my 

 studies of the habits of this fish were largely confined 

 to specimens in aquaria, these were supplied with other 

 food, and my conclusions were verified by subsequent 

 examinations of the stomach-contents of many speci- 

 mens. I have frequently found them with a partially 

 digested fish projecting from their jaws; and fish-re- 

 mains proved to be fully seventy-five per cent of the con- 

 tents of the stomachs of a series of seven adult specimens 



