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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLI 



able to repopulate themselves also indicates that the fish are non- 

 productive in such places. Lakes that have been exhausted of 

 Polyodon will remain so for years, unless the river rises sufficiently 

 to permit the immigration of more fish to restock them. 



Only one man was found who had probably observed Polyodon 

 in the act of spawning. He related the way in which he had rowed 

 a boat into a party of "Spoon-bills" during April several years 

 before, and had succeeded in killing nine of them with an oar with- 

 out being able to frighten them from the place. He said that this 

 occurred in the edge of a wooded overflow border of a bayou, 

 several miles from where it ran into the river. 



It is curious that Polyodon does not spawn in the large clear- 

 water lakes since the related Lepidosteus osseus and L. tristoechus, 

 both being ganoids abundant in this region, spawn in great num- 

 bers in these lakes. A spawning place of Lepidosteus was visited 

 on April 1st, 1905, though at this time only a few unhatched eggs 

 remained and all of the larvae had swam away. The fisherman 

 informed me that tliis party had spawned about ^larch 15th. 

 "Runners" of both species of Lepidosteus were taken in the seine 

 until April 20th, so tiiat their spawning season seems to continue 

 here for several weeks. 



The conimei-cial \alue of Polyodon is scarcely indicated in 

 Jordan and Evermann's statement,— "the flesh [is] coarse, resem- 

 bling that of the larger cat-fishes, but iiiferior in quality." For the 

 past ten or twelve years the roe of Polyodon has been used as a 

 commercial substitute for sturgeon caviar. Generally the Polyo- 

 don eggs are mixed with those of the sturgeon, so that the less 

 attract Ihivor (,f tlie former is not so evident. The flesh of 

 Polyodnii i> shipped to the northern cities where it is dried or 

 smoked and x.ld in tlie markets as dried sturgeon. The rapid 

 decrca-c in the supply of sturgeon for the last ten or fifteen years 

 has caused a strong <h>n]and on the part of the dealers for a substi- 

 tute, and initil now Polyodon is the only one successfully tried. 

 The demand for Polyodon has caused an extensive fishing industry 



