NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 147 



13. Crayfish; a species is found in all our small streams exactly like the European; 

 but they have greatly diminished. 



14. A species of clams. 



15. Sword, or gar, fish. 



This catalogue is very imperfect; for there are, beside these, a number of other kinds. 



Salmon have been caught, in the Seneca river, in every month of the year. They 

 sometimes weigh thirty-seven pounds. They pass Oswego, and go up the Oswego river 

 in April, are then in fine order, and spread over all the western waters in that direction, 

 and return to Lake Ontario in September and October, much reduced in size and fatness. 

 If this fish has the same habits as the European salmon, the numerous conical collections 

 of gravel which are to be found near the margin of several of the western rivers, must 

 have been erected by them. In England they deposite their spawn in holes made pur- 

 posely in beds of gravel, and covered with successive layers of the same materials, and 

 as it becomes animated each individual liberates and provides for itself. Their growth 

 is singularly rapid, arriving at six or eight inches in length early in spring, at which sea- 

 son the whole become immensely numerous, follow the old fish by descending with floods 

 to the sea. 



Although there is no animal, if we except man himself, that is so universally dissemi- 

 nated over every climate and country in the globe, as the common eel, being an inhabi- 

 tant in almost every instance where fresh water flows or is permanently stationary, yet, 

 strange as it may appear, I am told that none are to be seen above the cataract of Nia- 

 gara, or in Lake Erie. The eels migrate every autumn to the sea, for the purpose of 

 propagation, and the young one3 return up the streams in spring and summer, in immense 

 numbers. Some stay in fresh water all the year ; but they do not breed ; and it seems 

 to be a fact well established, that they do never breed in fresh water, the periodical 

 descent of the old ones to the ocean, and ascent of the young ones from thence, prove 

 that the scene of their propagation is in the sea itself. The route by the Mississippi is 

 so long that these periodical journeys are impracticable ; and although often seen ascend- 

 ing the rocks forty or fifty feet at the Niagara falls, yet they have been invariably driven 

 back, and have not been able to reach Lake Erie in that direction. The eel is, in one 

 respect, like the shad; the latter does not attempt to ascend the Mississippi; now and 

 then a meager herring is caught at Pittsburgh, which has struggled upwards of two 

 thousand miles against a strong current. If eels were left in Lake Erie after the deluge, 

 they must have become extinct in process of time, from the impracticability of access to 

 the ocean, where alone they can propagate. A remarkable fact, corroborating this 

 opinion, occurred, a few years ago, in the vicinity of this city. The river Passaic is 



