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BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
including a space of about 50 or 75 miles. Some time since I determined to try to domesticate them, 
and the effort has resulted in success. * * * They love a pond of clean water and a mud bottom. 
away. They will not go into running water if they can avoid it. Disturb them and, like a carp, they 
will sink in the mud and hide. They can be caught conveniently in a gill net, but with great difficulty 
in a seine. My pond covers 5 acres of land, the largest and best pond in western Georgia. It is a 
perfect mass of fish, and has been constructed only eleven months. The water is from an inch to 5 
feet deep and abounds in vegetation. 
Food and feeding habits . — The cat-fishes are omnivorous, subsisting upon animal 
or vegetable food. In a strictly wild state the food is probably to a great extent 
animal, but they will eat almost any kind of vegetable matter fed to them in artificial 
inclosures. Mr. Jones further remarked regarding his domesticated cat-fish: 
The species is easily tamed or domesticated. They can be trained like pigs; increase and grow 
fat when well supplied with food. They subsist upon vegetation, but in the absence of it can be fed 
upon any kind of fruit, such as peaches, apples, persimmons, watermelons, and the like, corn, wheat, 
and sorghum seed. I put fifty 3 inches long in a basket and set it in my pond. I fed them well on 
corn shorts and dough. In the short space of six weeks they grew to be 6 and 7 inches long and 
trebled in weight. 
Jordan (1. c.) says Ietalurm punctatns is an omnivorous fish, though less greedy 
than its larger-mouthed relatives, and that it feeds on insects, crayfishes, worms, and 
small fishes, and readily takes the hook. 
In some localities the mud cats swarm about the mouths of sewers and other 
places, where they obtain refuse and offal. This garbage-eating habit is, however, 
not confined to the mud cats, and the channel cats occasionally indulge their tastes in 
that direction. Slops from the galley and refuse from the toilet rooms of the Fish 
Hawk in the St. Johns River, Florida, formed a great attraction for the two principal 
cat-fishes of that region {Ameiurus catus ? and Ictalurus punctatus). It is doubtful if 
the food, however foul, taints the flesh in any way, and this allusion to some appar- 
ently disgusting feeding habits can not consistently deter anyone who is fond of pork 
or chicken to forego the cat-fish solely on this account. Besides it is only occasion- 
ally and locally that these fish have access to such food. 
Hiesler (1. c.) says that cat-fish appear to live on the larvge of insects and on 
flies that fall into the water. “They never jump out of the water.” 
Writing of Ameiurus nebulosus , Dean (1. c.) says: 
The habits of the cat-fish make it a most objectionable neighbor. * * * The stomach 
contents show its destructiveness to fish eggs and to young fish. * * * It will eat incessantly day 
and night, prowling along the bottom with barbels widely spread. It will suddenly pause, sink 
headforemost in the mud for some unseen prey. Nor is it fastidious in its diet, “from an angleworm 
to a piece of tin tomato can,” it bolts them all. From the contents of miscellaneous cat-fish 
stomachs, however, there appears to exist a general preference for fish food. Professor Goode has 
already noted the attractiveness of salt mackerel or herring bait. He has, moreover, hinted 
incidentally that the fish will not bite when an east wind is blowing. It is in order to procure food 
in a lazy and strategic way that the cat-fish has been seen to sink in the mud with but barbels and 
dusky forehead exposed, ready to rush out and swallow the unwary prey. 
In their feeding habits all species of cat-fish seem to be more or less nocturnal. 
They take a hook most readily from about twilight on into the night. Most set-line 
fishing is carried on at night. Moonlit nights, however, are more favorable than 
dark ones. Op the St. Johns River it was noticed that the fish would begin to rise 
shortly after sunset, in large numbers, and the sound of their “breaks” could be 
