8— THE SOURCES OF MARINE FOOD. 
By JAMES I. PECK, 
Assistant Professor of Biology in Williams College. 
During the summer of 1894 studies were continued, under the auspices of tlie 
United States Fish Commission, upon the food of marine fishes, and in working out 
somewhat in detail some of the ways in which several of them are related to their 
environment in these respects, and especially in trying to get a more accurate idea of 
the primary basis upon which they all rest; that is to say, the body of micro-organic 
material suspended in the water. 
Much importance naturally attaches to the study of the feeding habits of marine 
fishes, for attention is thus immediately called to the delicate adjustments upon which 
their life-history is based, especially in their young and defenseless stages of growth; 
and in no better way can the resources of any given species be approached than in 
understanding the possibilities of its obtaining sufficient food supply, together with 
its liabilities of falling a prey to other species. 
Such studies, moreover, lead to very broad considerations of the resources of the 
ocean, such as logically involve all its wealth of living substance, and so it is that 
the two sections of this paper, although dealing with such different subjects, are yet 
phases of the same theme. 
I THE FOOD OF CERTAIN FISHES. 
Having ascertained in 1893 the food of the menhaden,* which is not carnivorous 
at all, but subsists upon microorganic material filtered from the water, I have now 
considered the squeteague, which is a voracious and insatiable devourer of other 
species, and which visits the New England coast as a summer migrant and is taken 
regularly in the traps here located. Five hundred and seventy of these were exam- 
ined during the month of July and the first days of August, and their food tabulated 
as correctly as could be done by me, as it was taken from the stomachs of the fish 
when brought in each morning from the traps. This method is of course subject to 
somewhat unnatural conditions, because when confined in traps they may fall upon 
victims imprisoned with them, or they may be deprived of their normal quantity of 
food by their inclosure, but it seems to me that, after all, the results are not materially 
changed. 
See U. S. F. C. Bulletin for that year, p. 1113. 
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