aquatic JLitt 



69 



die. This does not apply to the "Killi- 

 fishes," however — that is, the fresh- 

 water species ; for any of these soon 

 adapt themselves to aquarium life and 

 conditions. This constitutes another very 

 large genus of wide distribution — the 

 genus Fundulus. 



Jordan and Evermann have said of 

 them in their "Fishes of North Amer- 

 ica" : "Species very numerous, mostly 

 American,* inhabiting fresh waters and 

 arms of the sea. They are the largest 

 in size of the Cyprinodonts, and some of 

 them are very brightly colored. They are 

 oviparous and feed chiefly on animals. 

 Some of them are bottom fishes, burying 

 themselves in the mud of estuaries; 

 others swim freely in river channels and 

 bays ; still others are "top minnows," 

 surface swimmers, feeding on floating 

 insects in swamps and streams" (p. 633). 

 These authors united Fundulus with the 

 genus Zygonectes ; and while the ex- 

 tremes of the two genera are very dif- 

 ferent in form and general appearance, 

 they are certainly closely allied, as they 

 approach each other in common charac- 

 ters. 



Personally, I have taken a number of 

 different species of these cyprinodonts 

 at various times in my life ; and at this 

 writing I have two specimens of Fundu- 

 lus diaphanus living in one of my aqua- 

 riums. They were taken by me in a 

 small branch of the Potomac River,, 

 near Washington, where the species is 

 very abundant. This species I have suc- 

 cessfully photographed a number of 

 times, and one of my best results is here 

 reproduced in Figure 2. It is a male of 

 F. diaphanus, or Banded minnow, or 

 Killifish. A subspecies of this form has 



*The few European species referred to 

 Fundulus seemed allied to the sub-genus 

 Xenisma. The Asiatic and African forms 

 are allied to or belong to the group Zygo- 

 nectes. In some of them the anal fin is much 

 larger than in the American species. 



been described — F. d. menona — from the 

 fact that it was first taken in Lake 

 Menona, near Madison, Wisconsin. Its 

 range is from Ohio westward to the 

 Mississippi River, and to a limited extent 

 perhaps a few hundred miles south of 

 Chicago. 



The coloration and markings of some 

 of the species of these Killifishes are 

 very beautiful, and none is more so 

 than the males of the Common Killifish, 

 F. hctcroclitus, which, when I was a boy, 

 was very abundant in the salt-water 

 ditches in the marshes at the foot of 

 South Street, in Stamford, Connecticut. 

 They also swarmed in the bay at certain 

 states of the tide. Two or three sub- 

 species of F. heteroclitus have been de- 

 scribed. 



The Puffer Fish 



It is true that there are no mermaids in 

 the sea, but the species of life that do 

 exist there are in many ways equally as 

 interesting as the mythological folk. 

 Take the little puffer fish, for example, 

 which has attracted the attention of sci- 

 entists from earliest times on account of 

 its shrewd habit of defending itself by 

 inflation. The moment it scents danger 

 in the form of a larger fish searching for 

 a dinner, it instantly distends itself with 

 water until it becomes almost spherical 

 in shape, so that no ordinary fish could 

 swallow it. Director C. H. Townsend, 

 of the New York Aquarium, placed a 

 few good-sized scup, or porgies, in a 

 tank which contained a dozen young 

 puffers, about two inches in length, which 

 the hungry scup attacked at once. In- 

 stantly the baby puffers inflated them- 

 selves and became almost globular in 

 form, so that the larger fish were unable 

 to do more than knock them about like 

 toy balloons, too large to be swallowed, 

 and on which they could get no hold, no 

 matter how hard they tried.- — Popular 

 Science Monthly. 



