The Naturalists' Companion. 
IT 8 
GREAT AGE OF FISHES. 
It is not generally known that 
there is hardly any limit to the age 
of a fish. Prof. Baird, of the United 
States fish commission, is the au¬ 
thority for the statement that there 
is authentic evidence to show that 
carp have maintained an age of 200 
years. 
There is a tradition that within 
fifty years a pike was living in Rus¬ 
sia whose age dated back to the 
fifteenth century. 
There are gold-fish in Washing¬ 
ton that have belonged to one 
family over fifty years. They do 
not appear much larger than when 
they were originally placed in the 
aquarium, and are every bit as live¬ 
ly as when young. 
The Russian Minister says that 
in the royal aquarium at St. Peters¬ 
burg there are fish today that have 
been known by the records to have 
been in them 140 years. Some of 
them are, he says, over five times 
as large as they were when first 
captured, while some have not 
grown an inch. 
An attache of the Chinese lega¬ 
tion says that there are sacred fish 
kept in some of the palaces in 
in China that are older than any 
of those in Russia.—Philadelphia 
Press. 
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It is proposed that a portion of the 
reclaimed Potomac flats be devoted to 
a zoological garden. 
Professor Oscar Schmidt, the great 
zoologist, is dead at Strasburg, aged 
sixty-four years. He was the first to 
discover in Goethe’s writings that 
poet’s aflflnity with the later teachings 
of Darwin. 
WIHTER BIRDS 
OF PRIJTCE ED WARD 
ISLAJVD. 
BY FRANCIS BAIN. 
The Kittiwake is the true bird of tlie 
wintery wave. In the narrows of the 
harbor, where the contiacted cuircnt is 
swiftest, there is often a restricted open¬ 
ing in the ice, even in midwinter. 
When the deep waters of the Gulf are 
frozen as far as the eye can see from 
the most elevated hilltop, the Kittiwa¬ 
kes will come in and gather round this 
little spot of blue, circling and dipping 
and rending the keen air with their 
harsh ke-a, ke-o ; reminding us, as we 
watch them amid nature’s fiercest aspect, 
of the amazing possibilities of animate 
being. 
It will be observed that our northern 
visitors are about the same as appear in 
the neighboring Provinces of the main¬ 
land. It is otherwise with our summer- 
visitants from the South. A number of 
birds of more southern habit, as the 
Catbird, Bluebird, Scarlet Tanager, 
Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Indigo Bunt¬ 
ing, Bobolink, Red-winged Blackbird, 
Meadow Lark, Baltimore Oriole, and 
Whip-poor-will, which visit New Bruns¬ 
wick and Nova Scotia, are never seen 
on Prince Edward Island. There is no 
reason to be found in the existing state 
of things why some of these birds should 
not stay over here and enjoy our delight¬ 
ful summer season, which is superior to 
that of the Atlantic seaboard. The 
reason is to be found in the fact that 
the Island was seperated Irom the main¬ 
land in the earlier days of the modern 
period, when the climate was cooler 
than at present, and the more southern 
tribes of birds had not vet distributed 
