The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1880-06-17
How Fish Find Their Homes.

The long held and only recently re-
iected theory that the schools of fishes
moved in vast mass along the coast,
sending off detachments into each river
as they passed its mouth, is to be at
tributed to John Gilpin and some other
authors, who have written howingly on
the subject. The recent careful investi-
cations of naturalists 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 chat each rivers col
ony remains, after returning, in the
deep waters opposite their river. The
motive for the movement of these schools
of anadromous fishes, or rather now it is
melted, has scarcely been explained.
The life of the fishes has always been a
mystery 1t is not in 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 recognizes the familiar
gates; but we have some evidence as to
what senses he uses. The fishes, proba-
bly,, prompted by functional disturbance,
from the tumid ovaries and spermaries,
are melted to movement. The courses
of the sea, unmarked as they are, are
within each colony's limit, their habit
ual 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 natica.
The latter goes to hide its sensitive body,
with nervousness of its unprotected
condition. The former, with an uneasi-
ness Of body from the functional changes
it is undergoing, is impelled to activity.
The transmitted habit Of ascending the
stream is, as it were, blended and al
loyed with the substance of the nerves,
and aroused 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 a
slightly more complicated series than
those Of the crab. That it should be the
instinct of specific stream, established
through inheritance Of many genera
tions, is easier to understand than it is a
sort of memory of the place of its imma-
ture life, as the theory or tish-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 Bushhill
creek returned after five years, and were
taken not only in the Delaware river,
but the larger number in the neighbor-
hood Of Bushhill creek. 1t is not essen
tial that all the fishes should have this
impelling influence, whatever it may be,
as like gregarous mammals and birds,
they flock together, following the lead
ership of whichever for the time takes
it. The idea is suggested that the
senses may be the guiding agent, that a
fish goes nosing along the coast or tast-
ing the streams, until it recognizes its
own. The convexity of the comea must
afford the fishes very limited range Of
vision. The supposed dullness OF the
sense of smell and of taste in fishes
might alone dispose of the suggestion
that these are employed. The following
occurrence, however, would seem to de-
eide to the contrary: The Russian river,
emptying into the Pacific, north of San
Francisco, and its mouth entirely closed
by the waves during the storm. The
colony of salmon made their yearly mi
grafton 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 migra
ton of the salmon into some of the Pa
cifc rivers is q frenzied advance over
shoals, rapids and cascades, far into thin
streams and brooks, where they arrive
battered and weary, to accomplish their
exhaustive reproductive labors, and drop
back, the sport of the current, dead and
dying toward the sea.-Harpers Maya
zine.