636 ZOOLOGICAL 
“noison’’ requiring the associated efforts of 
many persons. 
When the tide recedes entirely from the reefs 
about the islands, many large and deep pools 
remain filled with fishes of all sizes and colors. 
Into these pools the “poison” is placed and in 
a few moments the fishes come to the surface in 
such distress that they can easily be picked up. 
Schools of small fishes coming in across the 
reef with the rising tide are also affected by the 
drug and are easily secured. 
While most of the species of plants used are 
distinctly poisonous to the human stomach, there 
is no unwholesomeness attached to the eating of 
fishes captured by their use. 
Necessarily this wholesale method of fish- 
catching cannot take place very often on account 
of the great effort required to make it success- 
ful. Whenever a “‘fish-poisoning”’ occurs, it is 
the occasion of a general picnic accompanied, 
like other South Sea functions, with feasting, 
the wearing of flowers and much jollity. Fish- 
ing of this kind is practiced in many parts of 
Polynesia. 
The accompanying photograph which I se- 
cured in the Tonga Islands some years ago, 
shows the natives picking up stupefied fishes 
from a portion of a reef which had been thor- 
oughly “poisoned” with plant juices. 
At Raratonga they use the grated nut of a 
plant known to botanists as Barringtonia spe- 
ciosa, which is scattered over the bare reef to 
paralyze the fishes which return to their feed- 
ing ground with the incoming tide. Then the 
people with baskets wade into the shallow water 
and gather the finny harvest, dip-nets and spears 
being merely used to facilitate the work. 
Another Raratongan 
plant, (Tephrosia pisca- 
toria), is also used for fish 
poisoning, the whole plant 
being pounded and put in- 
to the water. Such fishing 
is sometimes practiced 
nearer home. On Eleuthera 
Island in the Bahamas, the 
negroes use the bark peeled 
from the roots of a plant 
locally known as dogwood, 
which is placed in gunny 
sacks and pounded. The 
juice of the plant discolors 
the water in a few mo- 
ments, bringing the gasp- 
ing fishes to the surface 
where they are easily 
picked up with dip-nets. 
SOCIETY 
BULLETIN. 
The Indians of Arkansas and doubtless other 
sections of the middle west, formerly resorted 
to similar methods of fish-catching. 
Bates long ago described in his classie Natu- 
ralist on the Amazons, a method practiced by 
the Indians of the Tapajos in taking fishes. 
The plant used was the poisonous liana, (Paul- 
linia pinnata), which was crushed for its milky 
juice. This placed in the water soon discolored 
it and brought the fishes to the surface with the 
gills wide open, in an apparently suffocated con- 
dition. 
THE BURBOT. 
HE only fish of the cod family inhabiting 
the fresh waters of North America is the 
burbot, (Lota maculosa), which is shown in 
the accompanying photograph of a specimen liv- 
ing in the Aquarium. It is variously known as 
burbot, ling, lawyer and fresh-water cusk, and 
frequents the rivers of our northern States, ex- 
tending through British America to Alaska. 
In the Yukon River, where it is known to the 
natives as losh, it often weighs as much as sixty 
pounds. It is an important food fish to the na- 
tives of the far north, but in the southern part 
of its range where it is of smaller size, it is con- 
sidered coarse and tasteless and seldom eaten. 
The burbot frequents brackish waters at the 
mouths of some of the large Alaskan rivers, run- 
ning up into the lower Yukon after the river 
freezes, where it is taken by the natives through 
the ice in fish traps. 
Great quantities of the fish are used as food 
for the native dogs, the liver yields an abun- 
BURBOT. 
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