598 
AQUARIUM SOCIETY EXHIBIT. 
Fishes from the tropics and the Orient, most 
of them brilliantly colored specimens rarely seen 
this far north of the equator or west of the 
Suez Canal, but all of them undoubtedly fishes, 
were exhibited last week at the American Mu¬ 
seum of Natural History, New York. 
The exhibit which was arranged by the mem¬ 
bers of the Aquarium Society, included fishes 
from India which think nothing of climbing 
over the land from one pond to another during 
the dry season, and can be sunk in mud for 
months without suffering from the lack of 
moisture. There are scarlet fishes from Africa 
of the Cichilde group, which carry their young 
in their mouths as soon as they have been 
hatched to sand holes. There the parents guard 
the young with the greatest care, furiously at¬ 
tacking any living thing that attempts to come 
near the hiding place; until after several days 
the young fish rises from the bottom and begins 
to look for food. Then the old fish leads the 
way and when night falls she gathers them to¬ 
gether in the sand hole and broods over them 
like a hen over her chickens. 
Should the visitor take off the wire netting 
which covers the neighboring tank where a half- 
grown, rather colorless, fish is swimming harm¬ 
lessly about and should slip his finger into the 
water while the attendant is feeding bits of 
scrambled egg to the climbing perch from In¬ 
dia, he is as likely as not to go home without 
the finger, for the harmless looking fish is a 
piranha which has strayed up from South Ameri¬ 
ca, and is one of the man-eating fishes. 
Then there were the Scolare, or Brazilian 
half-moon fishes, hiding cautiously behind the 
fronds of an aquatic plant, blue-ribbon speci¬ 
mens from the Amazon, and in a neighboring 
tank a pair of what, after a second look, you 
see are not submerged butterflies, but tiny fish¬ 
es, with little gauzy fins which they are flutter¬ 
ing in the water. African butterfly fish, these, 
which are natives of Lake Tchad, in West Africa. 
They are of the same family as the flying fish, 
which are often seen at sea, and their butterfly 
wings enable them to skim over the surface of 
the water, for twenty feet or more. 
One of the most interesting varieties were 
Gurami, from India, which possess a pair of 
feelers, which they extend before them and with 
which they feel their way as they swim. These 
fishes build nests of air bubbles on the surface 
of the water, and, as each bubble is coated with 
a glue-like secretion which the fish secretes in 
his mouth, the bubble does not break until after 
the young fish have hatched. The male fish 
gathers the eggs in his mouth and places one 
in each bubble in the nest and guards them care¬ 
fully, particularly from his cannibalistic mate, 
who is only too apt to make a meal off of them. 
A MICHIGAN FISH YARN. 
Although there are scores of court attaches 
in the municipal building in Detroit, Judge Phe¬ 
lan and Police Justice Stein, the latter more 
popularly known as Chris Stein, are the only 
fishermen. Clerk John Grogan, of the Record¬ 
er’s Court, was once an applicant for member¬ 
ship in this club, but he was blackballed when 
the members learned John formerly believed that 
a ship’s log was used to catch fish. John did 
FOREST AND STREAM 
not tell of this failing when he put in his ap¬ 
plication. He volunteered to tell a whopper of 
a fish story, but certain of the members refused 
his proffered narrative. They insisted that his 
tale probably would be a “phoney” one. And 
all such are barred. 
“Di'yuh ever hear of a fish that didn’t feed 
itself?” began Chris. “Now, listen, this isn't a 
comic section,” he continued, with an injured 
expression, “I hear enough wild yarns every 
day, without mixing with them myself. I’m 
not trying to hand you anything. I just merely 
asked if you ever heard of a fish that didn't feed 
itself?” 
“No; we never did, and, furthermore, you will 
have to tell that sort of thing in a most convinc¬ 
ing manner if you hope to be believed,” inserted 
Bob Palmer, captain of detectives. 
“Never fear,” assured Chris. “Once upon a 
time—” 
“Now, that’s not the proper way to start out 
a fish story; that’s the way they begin fairy 
tales,” objected Judge Phelan. 
“I stand corrected,” meekly replied Chris. 
“But don’t interrupt me. This experience oc¬ 
curred years ago, when Delray was a village, 
and River Rouge a swale. We used to live in 
Springwells, in the western part of the city, 
and near my father’s home was an immense 
millpond. 
“With my boy friends I often went there 
fishing, but the only thing we ever caught was 
a cold. However, there was a legend (I guess 
that’s what you call it) connected with the 
pond, to the effect that an immense sturgeon 
lived there. The story ran that the sturgeon 
came into the pond through an underground 
stream, nad then couldn’t find -its way out. 
While that may be, it was always the purpose 
of the gang to catch a glimpse of the mysterious 
fish. 
“One day I was paddling a raft across the 
pond, when I saw a commotion in front of me, 
and the homely snout of an immense fish parted 
the waters. I was amazed. I was frightened. 
And I was just going to swim for it, when the 
fish opened its mouth and a swarm of bees 
emerged therefrom. The bees circled about the 
head of the fish for a moment, then set off for 
shore. And the next second the fish slipped 
under the water. I couldn’t believe my eyes, 
so I determined to stay on that raft until ‘some¬ 
thing else happened.’ 
“I lingered there until the late afternoon, 
when a murmer attracted my attention. A swarm 
of bees was going over my head, and, paddling 
feverishly, I set after it. I didn’t have far to 
go, for again the snout of the sturgeon parted 
the waters, and as the immense fish opened its 
mouth the bees slowly settled into it- 
“Three months afterward my father caught 
the sturgeon in a net, and on opening it he found 
twenty-four pounds of honey inside. That fish 
had lived while the bees worked.” 
FISHES SWALLOWED BY GAR PIKE. 
As is well known, gar pikes are highly pre 
dacious fish. They devour vast numbers of food 
and game fishes; and in localities where they 
are abundant they are treated as pests and de¬ 
stroyed by the thousand. 
But although their voracious habits are well- 
known, there do not appear to be any definite 
records as to the size of the fish they swallow. 
This is due to the fact that only a very few 
out of the thousands of gars taken annually 
are opened, and among these it is rare to find 
one containing a fish newly ingested and still 
recognizable. The following record accordingly 
seems worth preserving. 
The New York Aquarium recently received 
an alligator gar which had been shipped alive 
from the lower Mississippi at Memphis, Tenn. 
It died on the way north, and on reaching the 
Aquarium was turned over to the Museum, 
where it was skeletonized. It measured 6 feet 
6 inches in length, and on being opened it was 
found to contain a flat-nosed gar (Lepisosteus 
platostomus ) 2 feet 2 inches in length, or ex¬ 
actly one-third its own length. The ingested 
fish had apparently been but recently swallowed; 
it was still intact, only the scales and head bones 
having begun to disintegrate in a few places. 
It lay in the alimentary canal with the head 
pointed toward the tail of its captor, indicating 
that it had been engulfed head first and not 
from behind. 
L. HUSSAKOF. 
WHY DO NOT BROOK FISH GET CARRIED 
OUT TO DEEP WATERS? 
If you watch a school of minnows in some 
stream that has a strong and swift current, you 
will see that they always head upstream. The 
reason is plain. Only by constantly swimming 
against the current can the brook fish remain 
a brook -fish, and not finally be carried out to 
see, as the brook empties into a river, and the 
river empties into the ocean. But we cannot 
suppose that the brook fish knows that this will 
happen if it weakly allows the stream to carry 
it along. The young minnow is born with the 
instinct to resist the flow of the brook. 
The most natural supposition would be, ac¬ 
cording to a writer in the Youth’s Companion, 
that the instinct amounts to a tendency to push 
against the pressure of the water; but experi¬ 
ments have shown that it is not the sense of 
touch, but the sense of sight that plays the 
important part. The -instinct of the brook fish 
is not to swim against the current, but to keep 
near the same “scenery” on the banks or bottom 
of the stream. 
The experiments that proved this were per¬ 
formed some years ago by Prof. E. P. Lyon. 
He put some little -fish into a bottle filled with 
water, and corked the bottle, which he then 
placed in an aquarium, whose sides had sea¬ 
weed upon them. When he moved the bottle 
along by the wall, all the fish crowded to the 
hinder end of the bottle. Of course, there was 
no current in the bottle. The fish were trying 
to keep alongside that part of the seaweed- 
covered wall that was opposite them before the 
bottle was moved. 
In another experiment, the professor reversed 
the conditions. He made a wooden box with 
wire netting at each end. Its bottom he covered 
with sand and its inner sides with seaweed. Then 
he -put the fish into this box, and placed it in 
a stream. As long as the box was kept still, 
the fish headed against the current, but as soon 
