CHAPTER I 

 THE LIFE OF THE FISH 



A POPULAR ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF THE LONG-EARED 

 SUNFISH, LEPOMIS MEGALOTIS 



*|HAT is a Fish ? — A fish is a back-boned animal which 

 lives in the water and cannot ever live very long 

 anywhere else. Its ancestors have always dwelt in 

 water, and most likely its descendents will forever follow their 

 example. So, as the water is a region very different from the 

 fields or the woods, a fish in form and structure must be quite 

 unlike all the beasts and birds that walk or creep or fly above 

 ground, breathing air and being fitted to live in it. There are 

 a great many kinds of animals called fishes, but in this all of 

 them agree: all have some sort of a back-bone, all of them 

 breathe their life long by means of gills, and none have fingers 

 or toes with which to creep about on land. 



The Long-eared Sunfish. — If we would understand a fish, 

 we must first go and catch one. This is not very hard to do, for 

 there are plenty of them in the little rushing brook or among the 

 lilies of the pond. Let us take a small hook, put on it an angle- 

 worm or a grasshopper, — no need to seek an elaborate artificial 

 fly, — and we will go out to the old ' ' swimming-hole ' ' or the deep 

 eddy at the root of the old stump where the stream has gnawed 

 away the bank in changing its course. Here we will find 

 fishes, and one of them will take the bait very soon. In one 

 part of the country the first fish that bites will be different from 

 the first one taken in some other. But as we are fishing in 

 the United States, we will locate our brook in the centre of popu- 

 lation of our country. This will be to the northwest of Cincin- 



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