American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1872-08-10
Miscellany.
SOME CLEVER FISHES.

w HEIHEk We owe many Oh Unc matter
we are about to glance at to fishes or no
it is certain that the fishes possessed then
long before we did i; and though mel
may be said to have invented them, vet il
his savage state he must have taken NOR
or less of hints from nature, and hav
adopted the methods which nature point
ed out to him as the most effective il
hunting or war (which were his principa
Occupations), whenever they could b.
adapted to his needs and appliances
However this may be, it is certainly sin
gular that we should find so many exist
ing similaritics of a peculiar kind between
the habits and attributes of men anG
fishes. For example, there is scarcely &
sport we practice or a weapon of offence
that we use which has not a parable
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
stitution among fishes. A shooting-fi fish
would no doubt be looked upon almost as
tusus nature by the average Englishman
who rarely includes ichthyology amongst
his studies fact which is very much
to be lamented, for we have large national
interests bound up in that science; in fact,
we owe a great deal more to fishes than
any other nation, not even excluding
the Dutch, some of whose cities were
formerly figuratively described as built
on fish-bones and a professional chair
of ichthyology at the universities would
be by no means an unwise institution.
1t is not many years since that a review.
which was published in an influential
paper, dealing, amongst other things,
with this special point, CONTEMPORARY
dismissed the fact of there being such a
thing as shOoting-fish as a travellers
tale. The ignorance amongst the general
public on everything relating to fish is
at times perfectly surprising. 1 have
seen small worthless bass passed off as
gray mullet; l have seen even nasty
gravid pOnd-rOach hawked about as gray
mullet l have seen large bass actually
sold for salmon at one of our fashionable
watering places. After this, if the Lon
dOner constantly buys coarse, dry, taste
less bulltrout as fine Tay salmon, it is not
to be wondered at. The Elton 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
Elton, and, backed by some skill as a
marksman, Herewith constituted himself
anintolerable nuisance to every village and
vehicle he passed on his road home. The
MacOushee Indian makes better use of
his blow tube; he puffs small arrows and
hardened balls of clay through it with I'M
birds and other small game. Now the
ch9todon, which is more or less a 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 a 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 a spray of
weed, twig, or a tuft of grass; on it sits
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 chietodon.
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 deity 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
hideous is he according to our vulgar no.
tions of loneliness, which the lophius pos
sibly 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
cavernous mouth Surely fish SO repul-
sive and with capacity so vast and ap-
parently omnivorous, would brighten from
its neighborhood all other fish, and would,
If its powers of lOcOmOtiOn were in &C
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 !
f1eetness 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 fishing rods; To !
the end of them is attaced by a line or a
slender filament 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 |
gudgeons? 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. ''1n that cloud of
mud is food" say the gudgeons Then
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 |
water. The gudgeons, or rather gobies, |
rush towards it. ''Bewarei bewarer' |
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-nef, thence to be transferred to the |
lOpliius' stomach, when there are enough |
of them collected to form 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. 1t is species of |
hunt in which a number of sportsmen
take in wide space of ground, where
and narrowing their circle little by little, |
flock, when they shoot them down. There |
was, some years ago, a capital descrip- |
ton of porpoises making a skall upon !
sand-eels, written by the late Mr.. |
James Lowe, some time editor |
of the Critic and 'Chronicler" of the |
Field, who saw the sight while fishing |
Il I'll n