124 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



Family CYPRINID.-E. The Minnows. 



To most persons all minnows are either " chubs " or " shiners," 

 and are by many supposed to be merely the young of large species. 

 Most of them, however, do not grow more than three inches in 

 length, though two or three species grow to be six or eight inches 

 long. There are at least fifteen genera and thirty species in the 

 Ohio waters. Many of them, during the spawning season in the 

 spring, put on very brilliant and beautiful nuptial dresses, rivaling 

 the darters in their gay appearance. 



The largest of the minnows, the real " chubs, " are quite palata- 

 ble when fried brown and crisp, but they are mostly used for bait 

 by the angler, and furnish food for larger fishes. 



The European minnows grow to a larger size than ours, some of 

 them being very large fishes. The European members of the 

 family which have been introduced into this country, the German 

 carp and gold-fish, are now found in many of our streams, having 

 escaped from overflowed ponds. I have seen some very large 

 carp and gold-fish in Ross Lake, and saw two large mirror-carp at 

 Remington that had been taken on a trot-line with helgramite 

 (larva of Corydalus cornuta) bait, in the Little Miami River. 



Other fishes that I found very abundant were the herring-like 

 forms known as gizzard-shad, skip-jack and toothed-herring, 

 which, while worthless for the table, are very valuable and import- 

 ant, inasmuch as they furnish food, while young, for nearly all, if 

 not all, of our more desirable food-fishes and game-fishes. The 

 gizzard-shad has a very thick, muscular stomach, resembling some- 

 what the gizzard of a fowl, hence its name. 



The natural food of the larger and better species, as minnows, 

 young skip-jacks, .gizzard-shad, toothed-herrings, and crawfish I 

 found very abundant in all unpolluted streams, but where there 

 were located starch-factories, paper mills, oil-refineries, distilleries, 

 ete. , on small streams, all fish-life was absent or very scarce below 

 them. The waste products of such establishments should be run 

 into suitable pits, and much of it could be utilized as fertilizers, by 

 mixing with it other proper material, and in this way become a 

 source of revenue and profit to the proprietors, instead of running 

 to waste and rendering streams unfit for live-stock and poisonous 

 to fishes. 



A large river like the Ohio tends to purify itself of foul mat- 

 ter by its strong and steadily-flowing current, where a smaller and 



