The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1880-05-14
WONDERFUL INSTINCT.
How Fish Find the Mouths of Their Ma
tive Rivers.

How Fish Find the Mouths of Their Ma
tive Rivers.
From Harpers' Magazine for May.
The long held and only recently re-
jected theory that the shoals of fishes
moved in a vast mass along the coast,
sending off dctachments into each river
as they passed its mouth, Is to be attri-
buted to John Gilpin and some other
authors who have written lovingly on
the subject. The recent careful investi-
cation of naiuralists indicate that the
anadromous fishes-thosc entering the
rivers and bodies of fresh water from the
sca-do not have an extended range in
the ocean, and that each rivers colony
remains, after returning, 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 ex-
planned. The life of the fishes has al
ways been a mystery. 1t is not Il 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
10 how each colony recognizes its native
river to say that sit is instinctive." So
it is, also, when the butchers horse
recognizes the familiar gates; but we
have some evidence as to what senses he
uses. The fishes, probably, prompted by
functional disturbance from the tumid
ovaries and spermaries, are melted TO
movement. The courses of the
sea, unmarked as they are, within each
colony's limit, their habitual pathway.
An unerring capacity in the fish for find
ing its own rivers may be no more than
that which guides the hermit-crab to the
shell of the natica. The latter goes to
shed its sensitive body with an apparent
nervous tfepidation of its unprotected
condition. The former, with an uneasi-
ness OF body from the functional change
| it is undergoing, is impelled to activity.
| The transmitted habit of ascending the
stream is, as it were, blended and alloy
| ed with the substance of the
nerves and, aroused by its condition,
carries it, without conscious purpose, in
| TO the river of its progenitors and its
own. The impulses of the fish are
only IN slightly more complicated Sc
ries than those of the crab. That it
should be the instinct for a specific
stream, established through Inheritance
| of many generations, is easier to under
stand than that it is a sort of memory of
the place of its immature life, as the the
| DRY of fish culture makes it and as obser-
walton 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-
Der in the neighborhood of Bush
kill creek. 1t is not essential that
| all the fishes should have this
impelling influence, whatever il may be
as like gregarious animals and birds
they flock together, following the leader
ship 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 tasting
the streams until il recognizes its own
The conyexity of the cornea must afford
the fishes a very limited range of vision
The supposed dHllness of the sense o.
smell and taste in the fishes might alone
dispose of the suggestion that these art
employed. The following occurrence
however, would seem to decide to the con
trary. The Russian river emptying int
the Pacific, north of San Francisco, ha6
the mouth entirely closed by the wave:
during a storm. The colony of salmon
made their yearly migration from til,
deep waters towards the mouth of thu
river. and many of them raced through
the surf and landed high and dry on tn,
| sand that walled them out from thei
native river.
The migration of the salmon into som
of the Pacific rivers is n frenZied ad
vance over shoals, rapids and cascades
far into thin streams and brooks, wher
they arrived battered and weary, to &C
complish their exhaustive reproductive
; labors, and drop back, the sport of tn
current, dead and dying, toward til
sea.