River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1880-05-06
WONDERFUL INSTINCT.
How Fish Find the Mouths OF Their
Native Rivers.
Harper's Magazine for May

The long held and only recently re-
jected theory that the shoals of fishes
moved in vast mass along the coast,
sending off attachments into each
rivers as they passed its mouth is to be
attributed to John Gilpin and some
other authors, who have written know
ingly on the subject. Tie recent care
| full Investigations of naturalists iadicate
| that the anadromous fishes-those en-
| tering the rivers and bodies of fresh
water from the sea-do not have an ex-
tended 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 a mystery. Tt is not a
| search for food, as they do not eat
while in fresh water; the opening of
hundreds of stomachs will fail to find
| food present. 1t is an easy disposal of
the question as to how each colony re-
cognlzes its native river to say that " it
Is instructive" So 1t is, also, when the
butchers horse recognizes the familiar
gates; but we have some evidence as to
what senses ne uses. The fishes, prob
ably, prompted by functional disturb
ance from the tumit ovaries and sper-
| maries, are melted to movement. The
courses of the sea, unmarked as they
are, within each colony's limit, their
habitual pathways. An unerring capa-
city in the fish for finding its own river
may be no more than that which guides
the hermitcrab to the shell Of the
nstica. The latter goes to hide his
sensitive body with an apparent nerv-
GUS trepidation at its unprotected con-
dition The former, with an uneasl-
ness of body from the functional chang
1T Is undergoing, is impelled to activity.
The transmitted habit of ascending the
stream, as it were, blended and alleged
with the substance of the nerves, and
aroused by its condition carries it, with
cut conscious purpose, into the river of
It's progenitors and its own. The i'm
pulses of the fish are only in a slightly
more complicated series than those of
the crab. That it should be the in
stincs for specific stream, established
through inheritance of many genera
tions, is easier to understand than that
it is sort of memory of the place of
its Immature life, as the theory of fish
culture makes it and as observation
seems to sustain. In the waters of
the Delaware, where there were no
salmon originally, the young salmon
placed IN Bushkill Creek returned after
five years, and were taken, not only in
the Delaware river, but the larger num-
hpr n tho r1njnhhnrhnnH Af p,,ahlx.H
Creek. 1t Is not essential that all the
fishes should have this impellipg influ-
ence, whatever it may be, as like gre
garious mammals and birds they flock
together, following the leadership OF
whichever for the time takes it. The
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 convexity of the cornea must at.
ford the fishes very limited range of
vision. The supposed dizziness of the
sense of smell and of taste IN fishes
might alone dispose of the suggestion
that these are employed. The follow
ing occurrence, however, would seem
TO decide to the contrary. The Russian
river, emptying into the Pacific. north
of San Francisco, had its mouth en-
tirely closed by the waves during a
storm. The colony of salmon male
their yearly migration from the deep
waters to 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 Cas-
cades, far into thin streams and brooks,
where they arrive battered and weary,
to accomplish their exhaustive repro
ductive labors, and drop back, the
sport of the current, dead and dying,
toward the sea.