Wyandot County Republican. [volume] (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1869-1903, 1872-08-08
Miscellany.
SOME CLEVER FISHES.

SOME CLEf Err FISHES.
WHETHER we owe many of the matters
we are about to glance at to fishes or no,
it is certain that the fishes possessed them
long before we did and though men
may be said to have invented them, vet in
his savage state he must have taken more
or less of hints from nature, and have
adopted the methods which nature point
2 ed out to him as the most effective in
hunting or war (which were his principal
occupations), whenever they could be
adapted to his needs and appliances
However this may be, it is certainly sin
gular that we should find so many exist
ing similarities of peculiar kind between
the habits and attributes of men and
fishes. For example, there is scarcely a
sport we practice or weapon of offence
that we use which has not a parallel
among fishes. As to weapons-daggers,
spears, swords, are all possessed by fish
In very high state of natural perfection,
and even guns have a representative in
Stltutlon among fishes. A shooting-fish
would no doubt be looked upon almost as
i q tusuS nature by the average Englishman
. who rarely includes ichthy ology amongst
bis studies ]; a fact which is very much
to be lamented, for we have large national
interests bound up in that science; in fact,
we owe great deal more to fishes than
any other nation, not even excluding
the Dutch, some of whose cities were
formerly iguratively described as built
on fsh-bones and a professional chair
of lchthyolOgy at the universities would
De by no means an unwise institution
1t is not many years since that review,
& which was published in an influential
paper, dealing, amongst other things,
with this special point, contemptuously
dismissed the fact of there being such
thing as shooting-fsh as travellers
tale: The Ignorance amongst the general
public on everything relating to fish is
at times perfectly surprising. I have
seen small worthless bass passed off as
gray mullet; | have seen even nasty
gravid pond-rOach hawked about as gray
mullet have seen large bass actually
sold for salmon at one of our fashionable
watering-plac After this, if the Lon
doner constantly buys coarse, dry, taste
less bull-trout as fine Tay salmon, it is not
to be wondered at. The Eton boy hasten
ing home for the holidays provides him
self with tin tube and pocketful of
peas. We beg the present Etonian's par
don; we should have said he used to do
so formerly, when there were boys at
Eton, and, backed by some skill as
marksman, Herewith constituted himself
oil uulSttuCc W every VllldgG anu
vehicle he passed on his road home The
Macoushee Indian makes better use of
his blowtube; he puffs small arrows and
hardened balls of clay through it with un-
erring aim, doing great execution among
birds and other small game. Now the
chsetodon, which is more or less native
OF the Eastern seas from Ceylon to Japan
rather perhaps resembles the Macoushee
Indian than the Eton boy, though his gun,
shooting tube or blow pipe, or whatever
it may be termed. is natural one. His
nose is really kind of "beak," through
which he has the power of propelling a
small drop of water with some force and
considerable accuracy of aim Near the
edge of the water is perhaps spray of
ii weed, a twig, or tuft of grass; on itsits
fly, making its toilet in the watery mir
ror below. Rostratus advances cautious
ly under the fly; then he stealthily pro-
/. jects his tube from the water, takes dead
ly aim, as though he were contesting for
some piscatory Elcho shield, and pop goes
the watery bullet.
poor insect, what little day of sunny bliss is
thine!''
Knocked over by the treacherous missile,
drenched, stunned, half-drowned, she
drops from her perch into the waters be-
low, to be sucked in by the chatodon
But if we have fishes who can shoot
their game, we have also fishes who can
fish for it; ay, and fish for it with rod and
line and bait as deftly as ever angler coax
ed gudgeons from the ooze of the New
River or salmon from the flashing torrent
. OF the Spey. Witness this clumsy looking
: monster, the fishing frog; frightful and
hidsous is he according to our vulgar no.
tions of loneliness, which the 1ophius pos
slbly might disagree with. The beast is
sometimes five or six feet in length, with
an enormous head in proportion to the
rest of its body, and with huge sacks like
bag nets attached to its gill covers, in
which it slows its victims; and what a
scavernous mouth Surely fish so repul-
sive and with capacity so vast and ap-
parently Omnivorous, would frighten from
its neighborhood all other fish, and would.
IT its powers of locomotion were in ac
cordance with its size, be the terror of
the seas to fish smaller than itself;
but Providence knoweth how to tenn
per its gifts, and the lophius is but an
insufficient swimmer, and is too clumsy
to support predatory existence by the
feetness of its motions. How, then, is
this huge capacity satisfied? Mark those
two elongated tentacles which spring
: from the creatures nose, and how they
taper away like veritable fshing-rods; To
the end of them is attaced by line or a
slender flament a small glittering morsel
of membrane. This is the bait. The
hooks are set in the mouth of the fisher
man down below. But how is the ami
NAL to induce the fish to venture within
reach of those formidable hooks? Now
mark this perfect feat of angling How
does the Thames fisherman attract the
ggqdgeens? They are shy; he must not
let them see him, yet he must draw them
to him, and he does it by stirring up the
mud upon the bottom. "In that cloud of
mud is food" say the gudgeons. Then
5. the angler plies his rod and bait. Just so
the lophius proceeds, and he too stirs up
the mud with his fins and tail. This
serves not only to hide him, but to at
: tract the fish. Then he plies his rod, and
the glittering bait waves to and fro like a
living insect glancing through the turbid
8 water. The gudgeons, or rather gobies,
rush towards it. 'Beware! beware!'
Z But when did gudgeon attend to warning
yet? suddenly up rises the cavernous
Nemesis from the cloud below, and
snap" the gobies are entombed in the
bag-net, thence to be transferred to the
loplius' stomach, when there are enough
of them collected to form a satisfactory
mouthful.
But we have still other sportsmen fish;
we have fish who hunt their prey singly,
or in pairs, or even in packs, like hounds
The reader, possibly, has never witnessed
skall in Scandinavia. It is species OF
hunt in which number of sportsmer
take in a wide space of ground, where
game circle, drawing Gordon around it
and narrowing their circle little by little
and driving the game together into 8
flock, when they shoot them down. There
was, some years ago, capital descrip
ton of porpoises making skall upo1
sand-eels, written by the late Mr.
James Lowe, some time edito
of the Critic and "Chronicler" of tn,
Field, who saw the sight while fishin.
near the Channel Islands with Peter i
Nowry, the pilot Having searched fo
this passage several times, without bein
able to find it, am reluctantly compelle
to quote from memory. They were fish
ing off Guernsey, when Mr.. Lowe calle