426 



ORDERS OF FISHES— GAR FISHES 



sometimes perish through natural causes, and 

 become fossil, Mr. Frederic S. Webster tells the 

 story of a death pool near the Rio Grande. While 

 collecting birds near Brownsville, Texas, he dis- 

 covered a large pool which had been filled by the 

 overflow of the river, but afterward entirely cut 

 off by the receding of the flood waters. A muddy 

 pool seventy-five feet long by twenty-five feet 

 wide was crowded full of Alligator Gars, living, 

 dying and dead, varying in size from two feet to 

 six. Mr. Webster estimated that that tiny area of 

 water and mud, no larger than a fair-sized ball- 

 room, contained between 700 and S00 fishes, all 

 doomed to speedy annihilation by the evapora- 



tion of the remaining water. When he discharged 

 his shot-gun into the mass, pandemonium ensued. 

 The pool became a seething mass of frantic life, 

 and the wild rushing to and fro of the large fishes 

 actually threw smaller ones into the air. 



A million years from now, the few men of sci- 

 ence who have not yet perished from cold may 

 discover on the summit of a lofty, rock-ribbed 

 mesa at the edge of a great desert, a marvellous de- 

 posit of fossil Alligator Gars, and wonder how so 

 many fishes chose to die in the same spot. But 

 only the rocks will then be able to tell the story 

 of Mr. Webster's Pool, and the world will be too 

 cold to care for it. 



