zoo I.OC; ILAI, S(~)CIF. TV BULLETIN 



supply of natural live food is brought in from 

 the adjacent bays and shores by the Aquarium 

 collector, consisting of minnows, shrimps, 

 mussels, crabs, marine worms, small soft clams 

 and beach fleas or amphipods. More or less 

 live food is always kept on hand in reserve 

 tanks. In summer when live food is easily 

 obtained, a great deal of it is used, being better 

 for the collection in general, while in winter 

 a larger amount of market food necessarily 

 is consumed. 



Minnows {I-'iiiidiiliis hctcroclitiis ) . when 

 procurable in abundance, are used at the rate 

 of lo or 12 quarts daily, and are simply thrown 

 alive into the tanks where larger fishes soon 

 dispose of them. Shrimps are used to the ex- 

 tent of about 15 or 20 quarts a week ; mussels 

 4 or 5 bushels a year, small crabs, such as 

 fiddler crabs, stone crabs and young blue crabs 

 by the thousand ; marine worms 500 or 600 

 per month; small soft clams 10,000 to 12,000 

 during the summer season. Beach fleas or 

 amphipods, the small crustaceans sometimes 

 known as sand hoppers, are collected in con- 

 siderable numbers. The collector secures them 

 by spreading a sheet on tjie beach at night and 

 placing on it a lantern. When a sufficient 

 number have been attracted by the light, it is 

 picked up by the corners and the beach fleas 

 spilled into buckets. Beach fleas are also se- 

 cured by hand picking at low tide, and to 

 some extent by digging in the sand. 



For fresh water fishes a considerable quan- 

 tity of angle-worms is desirable. These can 

 be picked up in the summer time about the 

 walks in Battery Park, when they come out 

 after heavy rains. 



The interesting little seahorses, usually to 

 be found at the Aquarium, can be kept to good 

 advantage only when they are well supplied 

 with Gammarus, a very minute crustacean. 

 secured by gathering bunches of fine sea-moss, 

 which they inhabit. The seahorses in the tanks 

 are usually seen on the bottom picking this 

 minute life from the weeds. Even under the 

 best conditions it is difficult to supply the 

 seahorses with a sufficient variety of the live 

 food required, and the Ijest specimens have 

 seldom lived longer than a year. It has been 



found that the longer a seahorse tank can be 

 left without cleaning the better are the chances 

 for maintaining colonies of (lammarus for its 

 food. 



\'oung trout and salmon in the tish iintchery 

 are fed successfully on minced liver, and they 

 are also very fond of herring roe. .At the New 

 York .\quariuni herring roe has ])rovcn to 

 he an excellent food for young whitcfish. 

 These are so difficult to raise that the fr\- in 

 Government fish hatcheries has usually been 

 turned loose in the streams when very small. 

 By feeding on herring roe the Aquarium has 

 succeeded in carrying whitefish through the 

 critical period of infancy, and at the present 

 time has specimens a year old and 6 inches 

 long. 



All the fish food from the markets is headed 

 and eviscerated before being cut up, as market 

 fish are frequently kept too long for any part 

 of the viscera to he wholesome. 



The cost of the market fond used at the 

 .-\quarium averages about $100 per month. 

 The various kinds of live food brought in by 

 the collector in connection with his regulai' 

 work of capturing specimens for exhibition is 

 valued at about half that amount. 



During the past five months the collector 

 was kept extremely busy as a purveyor to the 

 sea-cow or manatee. This animal, which was 

 a hearty feeder, turned up its nose at lettuce 

 and other wholesome garden vegetables, in- 

 sisting on a diet of salt-water eel-grass and 

 pond weed. It chewed up exactly 90 bushel 

 baskets of eel-grass and 20 of i)ond-weed dur- 

 ing the five months that it lived in the .Aquar- 

 ium. 



Carp, which are largely vegetable feeders, 

 are fed at times on soaked wheat, and the sea- 

 turtles, in addition to fish food are sometimes 

 supplied with small (|uantities of cabbage 

 leaves and sea-weed. 



The attendance at tlie .Aqnannni during the year 

 1903 was over one and a half niillinns, nearly twice 

 that of the Metropolitan Museum nf Art, It stands 

 alone as a record of attendance among free public 

 institutions. 



