196 
derful. My oldest bass one day came to my 
hand seventeen consecutive times, taking and 
swallowing a three-inch shiner each time, be- 
fore he was willing to stay back and give the 
other fish a chance. Sometimes, when their 
stomachs are filled so they can hold no more, 
the bass continue to catch minnows, squeeze 
and kill them, and spit them out. What fisher- 
man of any considerable experience in fishing 
with bait for small-mouthed black bass, has not 
been tantalized by having run after run, when 
the bass simply squeezed and killed his min- 
nows and then dropped them? And when this 
tiger spirit possesses the fish, what can equal 
the satisfaction that the fisherman feels when 
he beats the bass at his own game, and cap- 
tures him by spinning a dead minnow? Spin- 
ning, not with a gang of a thousand hooks, or 
six hooks, or three hooks, but with a plain, 
single Sproat hook on asingle gut leader. But 
I am digressing from the subject of ‘‘ My Aqua- 
rium.” 
In August, 1889, I was attacked with sick- 
ness, and for four weeks I was unable to go 
after feed for my pets. Some of my friends 
went several times, but there were ten days 
when my fish had received nothing to eat, and 
they were ravenous. They certainly were 
hungry enough to eat fresh meat if they could 
be made to eat it at any time, so I tried them, 
and threw in some pieces of fresh beef. As 
fast as the pieces of beef struck the water they 
grabbed for it like a pack of hungry wolves. 
Every bass in the tank snatched a piece of beef, 
and every one of them spit it out again. The 
bass, when hungry, appear to be willing to 
swallow anything that wriggles, but they cer- 
tainly refuse to swallow anything that does not 
show some signs of life. 
My carp was neglected during the summer 
of 1889, and as he had to sustain life as best he 
could, he has learned to eat minnows. He 
readily takes small minnows, if killed or crip- 
pled so he can catch them. He increased very 
little in size during 1889, but last summer I fed 
him bread, and then I noticed a steady growth. 
The carp is a great forager, always on the 
move, picking up bits of food, but he does not 
stuff himself as full as the others do. The 
NATURE'S REALM. 
channel catfish also likes bread, and while 
feeding the catfish and carp last summer, I 
found that they can smell the bread. After 
first noticing this, I experimented a great many 
times by quietly dropping bread, kneaded into 
balls to make it sink, into one corner, when 
both fish were four or five feet away, with 
heads turned in the opposite direction. After 
the bread had been on the bottom a few sec- 
onds, the catfish and carp would suddenly turn, 
swim directly to the bread, and begin to feed 
on it. They could not have seen me drop the 
bread and must be able to smell it. 
While the channel catfish are fond of and are 
expert in catching live minnows and crawfish, 
they are almost omniverous, and will also eat 
beef, liver, bread, corn, mussels or fresh water 
clams, worms, and in fact anything that has 
not become stale and putrid. 
According to my experience the bass, chan- 
nel catfish and carp eat practically nothing 
when the temperature of the water is near the 
freezing point; their appetite increases or di- 
minishes as the water becomes warmer or 
colder, and during the heat of summer they 
consume enormous quantities of food. A bass 
fresh from the river in the spring tastes quite 
different from one equally fresh from the river 
in the fall, and I have noticed in cleaning fish, 
that in April, when the scales are scraped from 
a bass the fish is clean, but in early November, 
when the water is fully as cold as it was in 
April, slime continues to ooze out of the fish 
after the scales are scraped off, and after re- 
peated scrapings this slime still comes. I have 
often thought that possibly this slime or oil, 
which permeates the entire body of the bass 
after the summer period of strong feeding, but 
is absent after the winter’s period of fasting, is 
the surplus vital power stored up during the 
feeding time, which sustains the fish during 
their periods of fasting. 
My aquarium has been for myself and friends 
a source of much interest and pleasure, and if 
any brother angler wants to try the experiment, 
I shall be pleased to give him further informa- 
tion about details for building and managing a 
similar one. 
