THE SMELTS 281 
nlose-set gill rakers suggest rather minute planktonic food, at least at certain stages 
of its growth. 
Concerning the fresh-water smelt of Germany, Bloch (1796) said that they live 
on worms and small mollusks. Reuter (1883) says that in Finland the food of the 
smelt consists of fish fry, worms, larvae, fish roe, and young water cockles, and it does 
not even spare its own kindred, but gormandizes unmercifully on the smaller speci- 
mens, especially when it has returned to the lakes after spawning. Mead (1883) 
said : 
As to the food of the smelt I am not informed. That the larger kind sometimes feeds on the 
smaller, I have recently learned from a neighbor who found one in the stomach of a smelt that 
he was preparing for the table. 
Nordqvist (1910) states that according to A. Luther, in Lake Lojo, in South Fin- 
land, the smelt subsist chiefly upon Corethra larvse, and that I. Kutschin found 
smelts in Lake Ilmen and Wolko River (in Russia) 10.2 and 11.9 centimeters (about 
4 and 4% inches) long had been feeding exclusively upon little smelts; and that the 
stomachs of little smelts 3 to 6 centimeters (about to inches) long contained 
principally Cyclops, Diaptomus, Hyalodaplinia, Bosmina lacustris, B. coregoni, and 
some other Cladocera. 
B. Heynermann is also mentioned as having smelts 9.5 to 14 centimeters (about 
3 % to 5 Yi inches), caught in Lake Wigry in Russia, which had eaten Entomostraca 
(, Bosmina gibbera, B. longirostris, B. cornuta), Cyclops, Diaptomus, Hyalodaphnia 
Diaphasoma, and Bythotrychus. One smelt had swallowed Leptodora. Larval and 
young smelts up to about 7 centimeters (about 2% inches) were said to live princi- 
pally upon Entomostraca. 
The fact is that no one has made a special study of the stomach contents of the 
smelt. Anglers know what it will take as bait, at least on occasion, and perhaps 
some of those who have dressed smelt for the table or cut them up for bait occasionally 
have had their attention attracted to the stomach contents, but there are no pub- 
lished records. Examination of the stomach contents of the small smelt of Sebago 
Lake indicates that it subsists almost or quite exclusively upon Entomostraca, and, 
as shown later, the large smelt varies its diet but little from that of both "small” 
and young smelts. 
It has been impossible to learn much concerning the food of smelts from other 
waters in New England by examination of specimens in hand, because the majority 
of them were taken in the breeding season in the brooks, when they virtually cease 
to feed. 
The small smelts of Sebago Lake apparently never take a baited hook; but 
smelts of similar sizes, even the smallest of adults, in Sunapee Lake, N. H., are caught in 
that way. This fact suggested that adult smelts there, although small, did not feed 
exclusively upon such minute objects as did those of Sebago Lake, but fish ranging 
from a little over 1 inch to a little over 5 inches in length, taken in Sunapee Lake, 
were found to subsist largely upon Entomostraca, although some insects, a few crus- 
taceans, and a few smelt eggs were found in the stomachs of some of those examined. 
Young smelts, like many other young fishes, subsist upon the minute floating animal 
life known to the scientific man as plankton, which in fresh water consists mostly 
