Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1880-04-30
NO. 1S.


HOW Etan Einu Inetr VNh AehNeFes
The long-held and only recently rejected
theory, that the shoals of fishes moved In q
vast mass along the coast, sending of detach-
ments into each river as they passed its
mouth is to be attributed to John Gilpin and
some other authors, who have written flow
ingly on the subject The recent careful in
vestigations Of naturalsts indicate that the
anadromous fishes those entering the rivers
and bodies of fresh water from the sea, do
not have an extended range in the ocean, and
that each rivers colony remains, after re-
turning, in the deep waters opposite their
river
The motive for the movement of these
shoals of anadromous fishes, or rather how it
is melted, has scarcely been explained. The
life of the fishes has always been q mystery.
1t is not search for food, as they do
not eat while in fresh water; the opening Of
hundreds Of stomachs will fail to find food
present. II is an easy disposal of the ques-
tion as to how each colony recognizes its ma
tive river TO say that ''it is instructive" So
it is, also, when the butchers horse recog-
nizes the familiar gates but we have some
evidence as to what senses he uses The
fishes probably, prompted by functional dis
turbance, from the tumid ovaries and sper-
maries, are melted to movement. The courses
of the sea, unmarked as they are, are, within
each colony's limit, their habitual pathways.
An unerring capacity in the fish for finding
its own river may be no more than that which
guides the hermit crab to the shell Of the
ndtjcd The latter goes to hide its sensitive
body, with an apparent nervous trepidation
at its unprotected condition. The former
with an uneasness of body from tho func-
tional changes it is undergoing, is impelled 10
activity. The transmitted habit of ascending
the stream is, as it were, blended and alloyed
With tho c,bptapna ~ ha va and arn,uad
by its condition, carries it, without conscious
purpose into the river of its progenitors and
its own. The impulses of the fish are only
in slightly more complicated series than
those of the crab. That it should be the in
stinct for q specific stream, established
through inheritance of many generations, il
easier to understand than that is a sort Of
memory of the place of its immature life, as
the theory of fish-culture makes it, and as OBJ
servation seems to sustain. In the waters of
the Delaware, where there were no salmon
originally the young salmon placed in Bush
kill Creek returned after five years, and were
taken, not only in the Delaware river, but
the larger number in the neighborhood Of
Bushkill creek. 1t is not essential that all
the fishes should have this impelling infu-
ence, whatever it may be, as like gregarious
mammals and birds they flock together fol-
lowing the leadership of whichever for the
time takes 1t. lhe idea Is suggested that the
senses may be the guiding agent that fish
goes nosing along the coast or tasting the
streams until it recognizes its own. The con-
yexity of the cornea must afford the fishes q
very limited range of vision. The supposed
dulness of the sense of smell and of taste in
fishes might alone dispose of the suggestion
that these are employed. The following oc-
currence, however, would seem to decide to
the contrary. The Russian river, emptying
into the Pacific north of San Francisco, had
its mouth entirely closed by the waves dur
ing a storm. The colony of salmon made
their yearly migration from the deep waters
toward the mouth of the river, and many of
them raced through the surf, and landed high
and dry on the sand that walled them out
from their native river.
The migration of the salmon into some of
the Pacific rivers is frenzied advance over
shoals, rapids, and cascades, far into thin
streams and brooks. where they arrive bat
tered and weary, to accomplish their repro
ductiye labors, and drop back, the sport of
the current, dead and dying, toward the sea.
james W. Miner IN HaTper's Magazine
for Nay.