CHUBS' NESTS 



327 



the fish is "prol)ably the Silver Chub or Fall Fish, Snnnnfilu.s- 

 corporalis Mitchell." It may be interesting to sportsnuMi to know 

 that the fish rise readily to the fly, occasionally can be cau<;ht witli 

 a troll, and are easily captured with an ordinary hook baited with a 

 piece of bacon rind. The flesh is coarse and the bones are few 

 and large, reminding one of mullet. 



In 1844 Chubs' nests were found in the Magalloway River, 

 Maine, by Dr. Jeffries Wyman. He described them to the Boston 

 Society of Natural History (Proceedings, Vol. 1, p. 196) as " mounds 

 of pebbles, two or three feet in diameter, which he was told were 

 heaped up by a fish called the Chub, at its breeding season, and 

 that its eggs were deposited among the stones." He referred to a 

 similar habit attributed to the lamprey eel and remarked that he 

 was not aware of any other instance of the kind.* Dr. Robert 

 Bell, in the report of his explorations referred to above, has pub- 

 lished a figure of a characteristic nest. He states that a varying 

 number of chubs work together in building a mound, bringing 

 the stones in ilicir months, one at a time, from far and near. 



In consi.lciinu- the relative sizes of the pebbles and the fish that 

 move them, it nnist be remembered that under water the weight 

 of the stones will be from one quarter to one third less than the 

 weight in air. In the cases of the larger heaps of stones it is often 

 found that there is an area greater than the base of the eone over 

 which the stones are scattered. In one case we found what ap- 

 peared to be the base of an old cone and the inference seems to be 

 that in the rebuilding every spring they repair the old nests, shift 

 them at times, and utilize materials from abandoned nests to 

 construct new ones or to enlarge the old. The larger nests are 

 probably the work of several seasons. 

 Montreal, January, 1907 



1 The nests of the lamprey are " gravel filled pockets. " "The central part 

 is usually 15 to 20 cms. deeper than the edges, so that the whole is dish-Uke 

 in appearance; at the lower edge there i.s always a pile of stones." The 

 stone carrying habit of the lamprey has been described by S. H. Gage, by 

 Dean and Sumner, and by Young and Cole {Anm-ican Naturalist, 1900, vol. 



care^among fresh water fishes (Rep^of the Smiihsonian Inst., 1905, pp. 402- 

 531) Theodore Gill does not include either the lamprey or the chub, the 



