36 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



or dies from exhaustion, his scaly splendor is as bright as 

 ever." In Sir H. Davy's work, "Salmonia," that great 

 philosopher wrote : "I think it possible when trout feed 

 much on hard substances, such as larvae and their cases, 

 and the ova of other fish, they have more red spots and 

 redder fins. This is the case with the gillaroo and the char, 

 who feed on analogous substances; and the trout that have 

 similar habits might be expected to resemble them. When 

 trout feed on small fish, as minnows, and on flies, they 

 have more tendency to become spotted with small black 

 spots, and are generally more silvery." Bertram, in his 

 work, "Harvest of the Sea," also remarks: "The color of 

 trout is of course dependent on the quality and abundance 

 of its food; those are best which exist on ground feeding, 

 living upon worms and such fresh water Crustacea as are 

 within reach." During the seasons of courtship and rivalry 

 of the male sticklebacks and their furious pugnacity for 

 victory, are those wondrously beautiful changes of hue at- 

 tributable to food alone? I believe not, although I should 

 like to see the subject fully discussed in the columns of 

 your paper. — John Colebrooke, in Land and Water. 



— , . «**♦ ; - 



V Gratifying Success.— Recently . George H. Gerome, 

 Esq., Superintendent of the Michigan State Fisheries, vis- 

 ted the Fish Works of Henry H. Porter, in this State, lo- 

 cated at the Half -Way Station on the Syracuse and Au- 

 burn Railroad, some 14 miles from Syracuse, and in a let- 

 ter to the Journal, of that place, he writes: — 



"Although I had previously obtained some knowledge 

 of the fish ponds and the fish culture improvements of Mr. 

 Porter, yet I was most agreeably surprised to learn the ex- 

 tent and the value, present and prospective, of the fisher- 

 ies there located, as by personal inspection I found them 

 greatly in excess of all my previous knowledge of them. 

 It is scarcely three years since Mr. Porter resolved on a 

 fishery there, and he has now several small ponds, fish 

 preserves, and a hatchery in full operation, and is turning 

 out excellent work. Several thousand healthy looking and 

 rapidly-growing "speckled beauties" have already found 

 very comfortable homes at this fishery; and the outlook for 

 permanent effective work I think of a very promising char- 

 acter. Few fisheries that I have visited — and I have visited 

 quite a large number in the 22 fish States of the country — 

 excel Mr. Porter's in the quality and quantity of the water 

 and in the generally favorable surroundings. The water is 

 all spring water, free from any deleterious mineral impreg- 

 nation, pure and cold, and with a flow I should judge, of 

 1,000 gallons per minute, and with easy facilities for an al- 

 most indefinite increase of ponds with connecting streams 

 and rivulets. 



"Mr. Porter informed me that it is his intention not to 

 confine himself exclusively to the culture of brook trout, 

 but to go also into the culture of the Skaneateles lake 

 trout; also salmon, black bass, and other varieties. And 

 of his success with all these varieties there can scarcely be 

 a reasonable doubt. 



"One thing greatly pleased me in my visit to the ponds 

 and the hatchery. It was the system, the carefulness, and 

 the cleanliness everywhere apparent in the establishment 

 and in the work of Mr. Porter, for without the most per- 

 fect order, care, and cleanliness in the various processes 

 and appliances of artificial fish culture, time and money 

 and labor are almost certain to result in discourage- 

 ment and vexation, if not in downright failure." 

 , ♦♦«. 



Tempting the Commissioners.— The State Fish Com- 

 missioners are constantly in receipt of letters asking privi- 

 leges in violation of the laws regarding fish. One favorite 

 request is to be allowed to seine fish out of some pond 

 where they are known to exist "for the purpose (only) of 

 stocking artificial ponds." In some cases, no doubt, the 

 writers of such letters are conscientious men, but in the 

 majority of cases — at least so Seth Green says— they are 

 the worst kind of poachers. Even persons who have net- 

 ted all the fish out of a lake, after it has been stocked by 

 the Commission, write on some miserable pretext for per- 

 mission to net them all out again. To all such applicants 

 the Commission have but one answer to make: They do 

 not grant any privileges to any person to use any kind of 

 nets in any waters in this State. And this hint ought to 

 save the Commissioners from further annoyance. 



w -*~*~ 



" Hitchcock's Improved Minnow Pail. — We have re- 

 ceived from Hitchcock & Co., of Oconomowoc, Wiscon- 

 sin, one of their patent combined minnow buckets and 

 coolers, the merits of which become apparent upon exami- 

 nation. We shall print a description of it in our next 

 issue. 



Cincinnati, Ohio, August 14th. 

 Editor Forest and Stream:— 



In printing the article in your paper of August 10th on transporting 

 minnows, your compositor makes it read "place a large pitce of ice on 

 top of inside bucket every ten or fifteen minutes." It should read: 

 "Place a large piece of ice on inside bucket every ten or fifteen minntes, 

 and churn the inside bucket up and down to aerate the water." Please 

 correct. W. B. S. 



\ntnml ]§iztaT%. 



TAPE-WORMS IN FISHES. 



A GIOANTIC TAPE-WORM FOUND IN A SALMON — GENERAL 

 HISTORY OF THE PARASITE. 



A 



A FEW days ago, the Hon. Doctor Winter, of St. 

 Johns, N. F., purchased a fine salmon, weighing 

 fifteen pounds. On opening it, the cook set free a tape- 

 worm, which came away in fragments, some being yards 

 in length, and others only a few inches. The Doctor, as- 

 sisted by the Rev. E. Bodwood, proceeded to put all the 

 pieces together, and to measure carefully the strange crea- 

 ture. To their amazement, they found it 62 feet 4 inches 

 long. If, then, these portions all belonged to one animal, 

 as seems most probable, it is the longest tape- worm yet dis- 

 covered ? There is no record of any specimen exceeding 

 £5 feet in length, and the great majority are under 20 feet. 



Moreover, although tape- worms have been found in certain 

 kinds of fish, I am unable to discover in any works to 

 which I have access, an instance of one of these entozoa 

 having been found in a salmon. On these accounts a 

 special interest attaches to this gigantic parasite, which 

 showed at least an appreciation of good board and lodging. 

 The salmon itself showed no signs of having suffered any- 

 thing from the presence of this unpoetical "Longfellow" in 

 its alimentary canal. It was plump and well-flavored, and 

 was pronounced by the Doctor, who is an excellent judge, 

 a "splendid fellow." I confess, much as 1 appreciate 

 salmon steaks, I should have hesitated to join the Doctor 

 at dinner that day, fearing that one or more of the ova of 

 this "protracted fellow" might find a resting-place in my 

 digestive tube. If tape-worms are capable of such an 

 emotion as astonishment, this one must have been consid- 

 erably surprised at the sudden ejectment served on him by 

 the cook's knife. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive a 

 snugger location than that which he occupied. "His bread 

 was given him, and his water was sure." Nay, he had not 

 even the trouble of digesting his food, this being done for 

 him by the lordly salmon, in whose duodenum he lay 

 coiled, drinking in the nutritious juices made ready for his 

 consumption. Talk of the tape-worms being "low in the 

 scale of being I" It seems to me they are the real aristo- 

 crats of creation. The salmon has to work hard for a 

 living, and to travel fast and far; the tape-worm gets an 

 agreeable amount of passive exercise without effort, 

 enough probably to give him an appetite, and he has no 

 cares about to-morrow. It might be thought, perhaps, that 

 he must feel lonely, as it is supposed only one of the species 

 is found at the same time in the body of the same animal; 

 but the creature is both male and female— husband and 

 wife, so to speak, rolled up into one; and their offspring, 

 which are countless, start in the world on their own ac- 

 count, and require no nursing. A tape worm having a 

 healthy salmon "outside of it," might be regarded as in 

 Paradise. 



The body of this specimen is flat, white in color, riband- 

 like in form, articulated, and marked or girdled with 

 bands. A longitudinal depression or slight furrow extends 

 throughout its entire length. At its broadest part the body 

 is close on a quarter of an inch in breadth. Dr. Winter 

 very properly placed it at once in alcohol, and sent it to 

 the museum, where I have had since an opportunity of ex- 

 amining it. I succeeded in finding the long, slender neck, 

 which at the extremity next the head becomes a fine thread.' 

 I was unable to distinguish the head, which in the tape- 

 worm is very small; but this may have been from the fact 

 that I happened to be provided with a lens of very small 

 magnifying power. In the slender, thread-like neck, I could 

 distinguish no articulations. ' Possibly a sufficiently power- 

 ful lens would have shown the hemispherical head with its 

 double row of hooks, fifteen in each, and its four suction 

 disks, whereby it adheres to the inner surface of the intes- 

 tine. These hooks are peculiar in shape; they consist of a 

 straight stem or handle, a middle knob, a distinct hook or 

 claw, surrounded by a sheath or sac. It is quite possible 

 that the minute head has been destroyed in the process of 

 extracting the worm from the salmon. I hope shortly to 

 get the specimen thoroughly examined by an eminent Ger- 

 man naturalist, who is about to visit this Island for the 

 purpose of dredging the shores and banks for mollusca. I 

 feel bound to state that, in the course of my examination, 

 I found what seemed to be two necks, so that it may turn 

 out that there were two worms, of which these are the frag- 

 ments. 1 cannot, however, speak with confidence on this 

 point. A microscopic examination will be necessary to 

 settle this point, and also to determine the species. 



The animal parasites, as is well known, are divided into 

 Entozoa and Epizoa; the latter living upon the surface of 

 an animal, the former within a cavity of the body, or with- 

 in the substance of some of its tissues or organs. All these 

 parasites, it is now known, have an independent life of 

 their own; and most animals have each their own peculiar 

 parasites. It seems a just retribution on these troublesome 

 creatures that the parastic animals are themselves infested 

 with parasites, and it serves them right that it should be 

 so, 



It is besides an uncomfortable fact that through food or 

 drink, or both, parasites pass from the body of one animal 

 into that of another, including man, and that in this way 

 the entozoa or their minute ova (eggs find way into the 

 most delicate tissues, to be developed towards maturity 

 At least thirty well-marked forms of entozoa are described 

 by pathologists as infesting the body of man, though many 

 of them are also found in the bodies of other animals. The 

 number of fecundated ova which most of them produce is 

 enormous. In the tape worm there are many millions- but 

 "the struggle for existence" consigns the greater part of 

 them to death as the food of animals unfavorable to their 

 growth as parasites. It might be supposed that in the case 

 of the tape-worm, of which the salmon was the unlucky 

 host, a vast multitude would be developed in the cavity 

 where it found shelter. But it rarely happens that the 

 development of the ova takes place in the same animal, or 

 in the same part of an animal where the parasitic entozoon 

 has passed its life and exercised the generative function. 

 The entozoa, or their ova or embryos, pass out of the body 

 of the inhabited animal, and may be introduced into the 

 bodies of other animals in their food or drink, or by piercing 

 the integument or other tissues. The diseases which they 

 cause tend rather to embitter existence than to cause death. 

 It is, however, a curious fact that it is the immature oara* 

 sites, enclosed in cysts, which tend to destroy the life of 

 their host, by the destruction of parts, as they pass from 

 one place to another, or from one stage of growth to an- 

 other. The health of the salmon does not seem to have 

 been at all affected by its undesirable guest, whatever its 

 feelings may have been. This arose from the fact that the 

 parasite was mature and in a free condition, in which case 

 they are comparatively innocuous. 



How did this salmon, living in such a pure element, get 

 the egg of a tape-worm inserted in its alimentary canal 

 there 10 undergo such a wonderful development Un- 

 doubtedly the ovum must have been in its food. Possibly 

 the germ came from th« body of some other fish which it 

 had swallowed; or, it may be from the carcass of some 

 land animal, such as a dog, Hung inio the stream in which 

 the salmon wa« disporting, and partaken of by the voracious 

 fish. The time was when tne short and easy answer to all 

 inquiries regarding the origin of these internal parasites 

 would have been, "spontaneous generation." This theory, 



however, is no longer entertained; and now it is clearly es- 

 tablished that all entozoa are produced, more or less 

 directly, from fecundated ova. The general and minute 

 anatomy of these creatures has been carefully jstudied as 

 well as their modes of reproduction, phases of progressi ve'de- 

 velopment and transmigrations from one animal to another 

 The first great insight into the matter was obtained iii 

 1842, when Steenstrup discovered the principle of "alter- 

 nation of generation" among the Cercarm, a class of worms 

 of microscopic size, found in stagnant water. He showed 

 that among these, generation was carried on through a 

 series of broods produced from one parent, each brood 

 differing from the parent and from each other. Steenstrun's 

 great discovery has been followed up by eminent investi- 

 gators in many countries; and now the result is a vastly 

 extended acquaintance with a realm of nature, but little 

 known, and the practical application of this knowledge to 

 the treatment of parasitic diseases. "The germ theory" f 

 disease promises to yield most important results in 

 connection with investigations regarding the causes and 

 treatment of many diseases. More and more, as the reve- 

 lations of the microscope are developed, it is being estab- 

 lished that each man is a kind of fauna! province— that 

 there is life within life— and that the cells of which the 

 organization is built up, are each a universe for countless 

 multitudes of microscopic creatures. In a new and wider 

 sense, man is shown to be a microcosm. 



The manner in which the tape- worms multiply their 

 species is curious enough, and has been made a matter of 

 actual observation by Dr. Eschricht, of Copenhagen. A 

 full account of it may be found in Professor Owen's Lec- 

 tures^ The process is briefly thus: "Within each point is 

 contained a complicated male and female, apparatus, cap- 

 able of producing thousands of fertile ova, and the sponta- 

 neous separation of these riper segments appears to be a 

 natural provision for disseminating the minute eggs. 

 Meantime, as the animal shortens by thus shedding its 

 hindermost joints, some of those which are anterior divide 

 into two by a transverse fissure, which two, after attaining 

 a certain size, again divide, and in this way new joints are 

 formed, and recede gradually from the head. But at a cer- 

 tain distance from the head, the divisions and subdi- 

 visions cease, and the whole nutritive power is expended 

 in the development of the organs of generation; and at 

 length ova begin to fill the uteri of the joints." It is only 

 in the alimentary canal of man or other animals, that ihe 

 tape worms reach maturity in this way, and then these im- 

 pregnated segments separate from each other and pass out 

 out of the body, are decomposed and the eggs set at liberty. 

 These ova are protected by a kind of leathery husk, which 

 gives them an extraordinary power of resistance to' chemi- 

 cal and even mechanical violence, so that after months of 

 exposure to the weather, the dried up segements of tape- 

 woiuis yield ova, which retain all their original vitality, 

 and are borne about by winds, waters, or other agents, as 

 accident may determine, and thus are frequently engulfed 

 with its food or drink by some unfortunate animal, such as 

 our salmon. In the alimentary canal the embryo fastens 

 itself by hooks to the mucous membrane, grows so rapidly 

 that in three months from a mere speck it becomes a 

 mature tape-worm, from 20 to 30 feet in length, and forms 

 complete sexual segments or links, each being hennaphro- 

 dite, and tending to separate when completely mature. Such 

 are the vicissitudes through which these beauties of nature 

 pass. It may be mentioned, besides, that the embryos of 

 the tape-worm may penetrate a vein, and in the current of 

 the blood reach the liver or other glands, and there become 

 encysted. 



At least eight varieties of the true tape-worm have been 

 found in man, but only two of them are of frequent occur- 

 rence — the Tamia solium, and the Tmnia mediocahcellata. 

 The latter is the larger, is hookless and flat-headed, but it 

 has more powerful sucking disks than the former. I am 

 unable to say to which of these varieties the tape-worm 

 taken from our salmon belongs. This I hope to get deter- 

 mined shortly by the able German naturalist, Heir T. A. 

 Verkruzen, who i3 expected here soon. M. Harvey. 



St. John's, Newfoundland. 



-*..♦. 



BIRDS OF CENTRAL NEW YORK. 



♦ 



[Continued from page 402.] 



Picus mllosus. Hai r y woodpecker. Found throughout 

 the year and breeds, but is most common in winter. 



Picus pubescens. Downy woodpecker. A common resi- 

 dent, but most abundant in the spring. 



Fphyrapicus varius. Yellow-bellied woodpecker. Com- 

 mon in the spring and autumn migrations. 



Centurus carolinus. Red bellied woodpecker. An irreg- 

 ular visitor. A few passed through in the spring of 1867, 

 and on April 23d, 1875, I took one female. 



Melanerpes erythrocephalus. Red-headed woodpecker. 

 Resident and breeds but is not very common in winter al- 

 though abundant in summer. 



Oolaptes awalus. Golden-winged woodpecker. Abund- 

 ant and breeding from early April until the last week in 

 October. 



Bubo mrginianus. Great-horned owl. Resident. Not 

 very common, and breeds. 



Scops asio. Screech owl. Not very common, but re- 

 mains through the year. 



JVyctea nwea. Snowy owl. Winter visitoi, not abund- 

 ant. 



Circus cyaneus. Marsh hawk. Common in summer and 

 breeds. Arrives the last of April. 



Accipiter Cooperi. Cooper's hawk. Arrives in March, 

 and nests. 



Falco columbarius. Pigeon hawk. Not very common 

 summer sojourner. Breeds. 



Falco sparverius. Sparrow hawk. Common in summer. 



Buteo borealis. Red-tailed buzzard. Resident, but rare 

 in winter. 



Pandion halicetus. Pish hawk. A few breed. 



Halimtus leucocephalus. Bald eagle. Resident, but rare. 



Ectopistes migratorius. Wild pigeon. Arrives the first 

 week in March, is common and breeds. 



Zenaidura carolinenm- Mourning dove. A bird of the 

 summer when it breeds, but never becomes common. 



H. G. Fowler. 

 • — «» »» ■ 



Arrivals at Central Park Meinagkrie Aug. 13 tc 19. -One albino 

 woodcock {Arclomys monax), captured at Pittsfield, Mass.; two albino 

 rats {Mm rattus , presented by Air. A. W. Mitchell, Elkham, Maryland; 

 one globose curassow (Otax globicera), presented by Mr. J. W. Wilson, 

 New York City; one rattlesnake (Crotalus du.issus), presented by Mr, 1 

 T. J. Daly, captured in the Berkshire Mountains. 



W. A» Co»xi.xN, Director,. 



