THE SMELTS 
313 
Lake, for instance, although there are various species of minnows that may consume 
some of the young parasites along with other “plankton”, and the small and young 
smelts, being almost exclusively plankton feeders, may be largely instrumental in 
keeping this parasite reduced. 
OTHER ANIMALS 
Various animals other than those mentioned have been accounted enemies of the 
smelt because they subsist upon it more or less, which may assist in this direction. 
Loons and crows are known to feed extensively upon the dead and dying copepod- 
infested fish, and thus destroy many egg-bearing copepods. If everything that eats 
smelts is to be convicted on that account, then the smelt is one of its own worst ene- 
mies. By referring to the detailed table of stomach contents of smelt in Sebago Lake, 
it is seen that a large proportion of the food of the large smelt consists of the young 
and the small form of smelt. 
One of the most pronounced “natural enemies” of the smelt has been stated to be 
the landlocked salmon. With one or two exceptions, there is no one who would 
regard the smelt as an enemy of the salmon. On the contrary, its presence in salmon 
waters appears to be essential to the existence of the salmon. 
If the distome parasite described by Ward as present in salmon is harmful to the 
salmon, then logically, in accordance with custom, this little worm is to be regarded 
as an enemy of the salmon. If Ward is correct in suspecting that the smelt acts as 
an immediate source of supply of the parasite to the salmon, then the smelt is to be 
regarded also as an enemy of the salmon. Ward found the parasite as common in 
the small smelt as in the large one. The possibilities, then, are that the small smelts 
transmit the parasite to both salmon and large smelts, as both subsist largely upon 
the small smelt. Therefore, if the parasite is harmful to the large smelt, to be con- 
sistent the small smelt should be reckoned among the enemies of both the salmon 
and the large smelt. 
The foregoing affords possible examples of certain “ enemies ” that are both 
harmful and beneficial, but it has not yet been determined which exceeds the other. 
If such conditions obtain, probably under ordinary natural conditions there is a 
balance, and it is only when the balance is disturbed that the parasites become a 
detriment. 
The paramount enemy of fish is man, for he is the great disturber of balances. 
He not only has been and still is to a great extent the most wanton and selfish 
destroyer of fish themselves, but if he suspects any other animal of eating any particular 
fish that is the object of his own pursuit, he immediately denounces it as an enemy 
to the fish and himself. He does not realize to what extent the existence of his 
favorite fish may depend upon one or another of the so-called enemies. If he sees a 
loon or a flock of sheldrake feeding in a salmon lake his imagination runs riot, 
and the birds are forthwith indicted for alleged destruction of salmon, when the 
fact is they are doing good work in cleaning the lake of dead and dying copepod- 
infested fish. Once the present writer heard his guide damn the crows and loons 
because the birds beat him to the dead smelts floating at the surface, which he desired 
for salmon bait. The sportsman observes a few heron along the still water of some 
trout stream; the heron is then, without benefit of clergy or jury, convicted of 
