The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-02-21
quents the fresh waters of America, of Europe,
and of Northern Asia also. ~

II.
and OF Northern Asia also.
THE STURGEON AND IT'S coNaEyERs.
Next come the surgeons. They are found
IN IN all the fresh waters of the northern world.
They are common in the rivers which empty
INTO the Arctic Ocean, or the continents of
America, OF Europe, and of Asia The great
rivers OF Asia TEEN with varieties of Surgeons
nom kamschatka to the Ural Mountains. and
IN our northern rivers, emptying into the
Arctic Ocean and Bafn's Bay, they are equally
numei Gus, and they are also found in some of
the more southern rivers of the temperate
zone; but nowhere in the tropics are they
found. The sturgeon of the Mississippi de
scends as far as New Orleans, but does not
enter the ocean, and this is the most southerly
point the sturgeon has been known to visit.
In Europe there has been a variety of the
sturgeon found in the basin of the Danube
and the Black Sea, but there are none in the
Mediterranean. There are some found in the
Chinese rivers, but none are found in those
rivers which empty into the Indian Ocean or
the Pacific, which bathes the southern shore
of Asia, and none are found in the waters of
South America. But while that family is
entirely foreign to the tropics, South America
has what may be called representative fishes
that is, fishes which ape the the sturgeon.
without assuming all its characteristics. You
have seen in the figure | have made here of
the sturgeon, that it is characterized by the
tatness of its mouth, and the position
of the mouth underneath, and further,
by the scales, or rather of the shales
which cover their body, and which are ar
ranged in five rows over the body one row of
large shales along the middle of the back, one
row on each side along the middle line, and
one row on each side along the lower line, and
these shales are bone, hard, and often covered
with enamel. Now while we have no stur-
geon i'll the Amazon, we have Variety of fish
akin to the sturgeon in some respects-the
same flat head with the mouth underneath
and the body covered with shales, but these
shales occupy either the whole body in various
combinations, or form only some rows in
different arrangement from the sturgeon, and
all these fishes of South America differ from
the sturgeon in having a solid bony frame in
stead OF a cartilaginous one, which is character
Istic OF the sturgeon. | may draw one or two
to give you some idea of them. In the first
place, the tail is not as symmetrical as it is in
the sturgeon; then, the mouth is surrounded
by broad fappers which sometimes extend
like curtain from the mouth, and the dorsal
fin may be very large. In some of them the
anterior part is prolonged into kind of width
which extends far beyond the general outline
of the fish, 1t may be, also, that sometimes
the upper lobe of the tail is prolonged in this
manner i'll the shape of q whip, and then we
have the position of the vGntrals and the pee
torals as in the other.
HOW THEY CARE FOR THEIR YOUNG.
Now some of these fish have singular mode
of taking care of their yong. There is one
species, which grows two feet or more III
length, which lays its eggs in balls about the
size of large egg. 1t lays in holes. The fish
itself burrows the holes in the banks. Sup
pose we have here a river bank this being the
lowwater level and this the high water level. Be
tween the low water level and the high water
level you can see, when the water is low, holes
in the bank which extend horizontally into
the bank from two to three feet ard which, at
the end, enlarge like funnel. Here the fish
comes to lay its eggs, and during the time the
young are developing the fish comes frequently
and rests its head over the young, surrounding
them with the tappers of the mouth, and
breathing, as it were, fresh air over them
during the process of heaving and subsiding
the gills Others carry their young rolled
up in these curtains of the gills, in mass,
tied up, as it were between the folds of the
gill, and the young remain in that way pro-
tected by these folds of the mouth, and are
carried along until they are ready to hatch.
| have frequently caught fish with these
punches of eggs in the folds of their lips, and
have often raised some of them and been able
to trace the changes which they undergo, and
which show one singular feature, that i'll their
4 young condition the tail end of the body of the
4 young presents exactly that singular inequality
y which we have i'll the shark, and which we
have in the sturgeon and which, to say it in
passing, is a feature common to all the fishes
N of the old geological formations; so that | may,
without eXaggeration, say that the form of the
Young of the fishes of the earliest days of crea-
Il ton resembles the form of the young of the
fishes of our day in the most striking manner;
which shows again what an intimate link there
is, whether material or intellectual, through
out the creation, from beginning to end, from
e one point on the surface of the earth to the
other. (Applause.) This family of mailed
fishes goes by the name of ganoidian; and these
are exclusively found in the fresh waters of
the Amazon replacing there the type of stur-
geons which characterize the fresh waters of the
northern hemisphere. By the side of that we
have another group, which is more blunt in
II form, and in which the scales are remarkable
for being only two III each row-that is, there
'# are only two scales, one row on each side, a
sort of coat-Of-mail, made up in this manner
of broad plates, extending from the back tC
the middle of the line, and from that another
row extending to the lower portion of the
body a small fin the back, another under
the tail, and the ordinary pectorals and ven
trails there. illustrating on blackboard,
This fish is remarkable for the faculty it enjoys
of leaving the water and walking a conrider-
able distance over the land. daughter.
Sometimes it is found three, four, and five
miles from the water, and specimens have
4 been brought to me which have left on the
ground for a day, and afterwards, when put
back into water they were as lively as if they
had not been disturbed. That fish has another
peculiarity; it builds a st-(applause)-
large nest about the size of a mans hat, will