1876.] Johnny Darters. — 335 
winters were more severe than now, the summers shorter, and 
the reindeer still abundant. At this time, the river, now oceupy- 
ing a comparatively small and shallow channel, flowed at an ele- 
vation of nearly fifty feet above its present level; and it was 
when such a mighty stream as this, that man first gazed upon its 
waters and lost those rude weapons in its swift current that now, 
in the beds of gravel which its floods have deposited, are alike the 
puzzle and delight of the archeologist. Had these first comers,’ 
like the troglodytes of France, had convenient caves to shelter 
them, doubtless we would have their better wrought implements 
of bone to tell more surely the story of their ancient sojourn 
here; but, wanting them, their history is not altogether lost, and 
in the rude weapons, now deep down beneath the grassy sod and 
flower-decked river bank, we learn at least the fact of the pres- 
ence, in the distant past, of an earlier people than the Indian, 
and have a veritable trace of the American autochthon. 
JOHNNY DARTERS. 
BY D. S. JORDAN AND H. E. COPELAND. 
NY one who has ever been a boy, and can remember the days 
of green meadows, tag alders, and an angleworm on a pin 
hook, surely has not forgotten the little dusky fish which lay 
Perfectly motionless on the pebbly bottom of the shallow stream, 
untempted by fly or worm, while over his head the silly little 
minnows strained their toothless mouths in a vain endeavor to 
Swallow the bait meant for the nobler sun-fish. You will remem- 
ber, too, that when, after watching him a while, you put down 
your hand to catch the little philosopher, just as you had cov- 
ered him and were sure you had him he was resting as com- 
Posedly as ever a few feet farther up the stream. That little 
fish was a J ohnny Darter. 
It is an ancient and venerable family, that to which he be- 
longs, the family of Darters. It is exclusively American, but 
pone the less ancient and venerable on that account, for its mem- 
bers in every pond and brook of our Eastern United States trace 
back their lineage through a dozen lines of descent to a primitive 
tter, which lived and loved a million of years before the time 
of David Bruce or William the Conqueror. 
‘The naturalists know them as Etheostomoids, from Etheostoma, 
the name given by Rafinesque to the first ones described, for 
