4 FISHES OF PENNSYLVANIA. 

composed of soft rays, nearly opposite. Tail heterocercal, well forked. Upper lobe 
of caudal, on vertebral column, armed with rhombic plates. The pectoral fins are 
of moderate size and placed low; ventrals many rayed, abdominal. 
The distance from eye to end of snout is about one-third of the total length, includ- 
ing caudal. The depth of the body is contained four and one-half times in distance 
from eye to base of caudal. The height of the dorsal fin about equals the depth of 
the body. 
This is known as the paddle-fish, spoon-bill or spoon-billed sturgeon, 
shovel-fish, bill-fish and duck-billed cat ; it is called ‘salmon ” in some 
western hotels. 
The names are derived from the remarkable snout, which is produced 
into a long spatula-shaped process, covered above and below with an in- 
tricate network and has very thin flexible edges. The head and snout 
form nearly half of the entire length of the fish. The fish cannot be 
confounded with anything else in the waters of the United States. There 
is in China a similar one, which, however, belongs to a different genus. 
Distribution —The single species of American paddle-fish is confined 
to the Mississippi valley. It inhabits only the larger streams in Penn- 
sylvania. It is common in the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers. 
Size.—The paddle-fish grows to a length of six feet, and a weight of 
thirty pounds or more. 
Habits.— The species frequents muddy bottoms, but does not feed upon 
the mud and slime as many persons have supposed. The long snout is 
useful in procuring its food, which consists chiefly of entomostraca, 
water worms, aquatic plants, leeches, beetles and insect larve. 
Prof. S. A. Forbes, director of the Illinois Laboratory of Natural His- 
tory, has published the first and most satisfactory account of the feed- 
ing habits of this shark-like fish. He found very little mud mixed with 
the food. Prof. Forbes was informed by the fishermen that the paddle- 
fish plows up the mud in feeding with its spatula-like snout and then 
swims slowly backward through the water. 
“The remarkably developed gill-rakers of this species are very nu- 
merous and fine, in a double row on each gill arch, and they are twice 
as long as the filaments of the gill. By their interlacing they form a 
strainer scarcely less effective than the fringes of the baleen plates of 
the whale, and probably allow the passage of the fine silt of the river bed 
when this is thrown into the water by the shovel of the fish but arrest 
everything as large as a Cyclops.” 
T have not found anything recorded as to the spawning habits of the 
paddle-fish. The young have thejawsand palate filled with minute teeth, 
which disappear with age. 
Mode of capture.—The fish are generally caught by seining. 
Edible qualities.—The flesh of the paddle-fish is generally considered 
tough and shark-like, but individuals of eight or ten pounds are skinned 
and sold in some of the western markets very freely, and by some per- 
sons are thought to be very fair for the table. 

