FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 



I I I 



The entomostraca are minute crustaceans, but the Cyclops has been greatly 

 enlarged, that it may be more easily identified. A single entomostraca, either of 

 this specie or the one next described, is so small that it requires good eyes to 

 distinguish it in the water, but a mass of some species of entomostraca in the water 

 in the spring and summer has an appearance not unlike blood. Small as these 

 crustaceans are, a species of copepoda, to which order the Cyclops belongs, forms 

 much of the food of whales. Fig. 1 1 is another crustacean, Daphnia pulex. 



Fig. ii. Daphnia pulex. 



This minute crustacean is commonly known as the water-flea, and like the " four- 

 horned " Cyclops, is greatly enlarged in the drawing. If all is true that has been 

 said of the Daphnia, they are the most prolific animals on earth. During a corre- 

 spondence with an Austrian fish culturist in regard to fish food he sent me a clipping 

 from an Austrian newspaper which, being translated, read that " A pair of Daphnia 

 increases (reproduces) within twenty-four hours to 1,000,000,000 of descendants." 

 This seems to be too remarkable a feat in reproduction for one poor little female 

 Daphnia to be charged with. I submitted the correspondence to Mr. Charles G. 

 Atkins, Superintendent of the Maine Hatching Stations of the United States Fish 

 Commission, who, more than any man that I know in this country, has investigated 

 and practiced the artificial propagation of natural fish food. Mr. Atkins, after reading 

 the statement of wonderful reproduction of Daphnia, said : "The man who wrote 

 that has committed an enormous blunder. The increase of Daphnia is at no such 

 rate. In an article that I read, some time since, in Revue des Sciences Naturelles 



