426 
ORDERS OF FISHES— GAR FISHES 
sometimes perish through natural causes, and 
become fossil, Mr. Frederic S. Webster tells the 
story of a death pool near the Rio Grande. While 
collecting birds near Brownsville, Texas, he dis- 
covered a large pool which had been filled by the 
overflow of the river, but afterward entirely cut 
off by the receding of the flood waters. A muddy 
pool seventy-five feet long by twenty-five feet 
wide was crowded full of Alligator Gars, living, 
dying and dead, varying in size from two feet to 
six. Mr. Webster estimated that that tiny area of 
water and mud, no larger than a fair-sized ball- 
room, contained between 700 and 800 fishes, all 
doomed to speedy annihilation by the evapora- 
tion of the remaining water. When he discharged 
his shot-gun into the mass, pandemonium ensued. 
The pool became a seething mass of frantic life, 
and the wild rushing to and fro of the large fishes 
actually threw smaller ones into the air. 
A million years from now, the few men of sci- 
ence who have not yet perished from cold may 
discover on the summit of a lofty, rock-ribbed 
mesa at the edge of a great desert, a marvellous de- 
posit of fossil Alligator Gars, and wonder how so 
many fishes chose to die in the same spot. But 
only the rocks will then be able to tell the story 
of Mr. Webster’s Pool, and the world will be too 
cold to care for it. 
