REPRINT OF ORIGINAL TEXT 71 



and Alleghany, as also in the Mississippi, Tennessee, 

 Cumberland, Kentucky, Wabash, Miami, &c. and all 

 the large tributary streams : where it is permanent, 

 since it is found at all seasons except in winter. In 

 Pittsburgh it appears again in February. It feeds 

 on many species of fishes. Suckers, Catfishes, Sun- 

 fishes, &c. but principally on the muscles, or various 

 species of the bivalve genus Unio, so common in the 

 Ohio, whose thick shells it is enabled to crush by 

 means of its large throat teeth. The structure of 

 those teeth is very singular and peculiar, they are 

 placed like paving stones on the flat bone of the 

 lower throat, in great numbers and of different sizes ; 

 the largest, wliich are as big as a man's nails, are 

 always in the centre ; they are inverted in faint 

 alveoles, but not at all connected with the bone; 

 their shape is circular and flattened, the inside 

 always hollow, with a round hole beneath: in the 

 young fishes they are rather convex above and evi- 

 dently radiated and mamillar ; while in the old fishes 

 they become smooth, truncate, and shining white. 

 These teeth and their bone are common in many 

 museums, where they are erroneously called teeth of 

 the Buffalo-fish or of a Cat-fish. I was deceived so 

 far by this mistake and by the repeated assertions of 

 several persons, as to ascribe those teeth to the 

 Buffalo-fish, which I have since found to be a real 

 Catostomus; this error I now correct with pleasure. 



A remarkable peculiarity of this fish consists in 

 the strange grunting noise, which it produces, and 

 from which I have derived its specific name. It is 

 intermediate between the dumb grunt of a hog and 

 the single croaking noise of the bull frog : that grunt 

 is only repeated at intervals and not in quick succes- 



