The Food of Fishes. 23 
the common perch, the white bass, and the cr^ppie or 
silver bass. 
The following account of the food of this suborder is 
based upon the careful microscopic study of the contents 
of four hundred and twenty-five stomachs, representing 
six families, twenty genera* and thirty-three species. 
These were all collected by myself or one of my assist- 
ants (Mr. W. H. Garman), and labeled at the time with 
name of species, locality, and date. While the northern 
half of the State is most fully represented, several trips 
to southern Illinois contributed to the material studied 
and it is believed that the results arrived at are substan- 
tially true for our whole area. 
Family ETHEOSTOMATIDAE. The Darters. 
What the humming-birds are in our avifauna, the 
“darters” are among our fresh-water fishes. Minute, 
agile, beautiful, delighting in the clear, swift waters of 
rocky streams, no group of fishes is more interesting to 
the collector ; and in the present state of their classifica- 
tion, none will better repay his study. Notwithstanding 
their trivial size, they do not seem to be dwarfed so much 
as concentrated fishes — each carrying in its little body all 
the activity, spirit, grace, complexity of detail, and per- 
fection of finish to be found in a perch or a “wall-eyed 
pike. ’ J 
They are generally distributed, in suitable streams 
throughout the State ; but we have found them much the 
most abundant in northern Illinois — in the upper Galena 
River, in Yellow Creek near Freeport, and in tributaries 
of the Kishwaukee at Belvidere. 
A short and strong minnow-seine of very fine mesh is 
needed in collecting them. Rapid hauls, made almost on 
the run, down stream, in swift and shallow water, will be 
found the most successful. Two or three species, of wider 
range, will be taken in ordinary situations, in collecting 
for minnows generally: but the brightest and most char- 
acteristic forms can only be got by special effort.! 
* The classification of this paper is substantially that of Jordan’s Man- 
ual of the Vertebrates of North America, etc., Ed. 2. 1878. 
t For a very entertaining- and instructive account of these fishes, the 
reader is referred to papers in the American Naturalist, by Messrs. Jordan 
and Copeland, Vol. X, pp. 335-341, and Vol. XT, pp. 86-88. 
