Litchfield enquirer., 1880-05-06

How FISH FIND THEIR OWN RIvERs.-
 The long held and only recently rejected theo- l ry that the shoals of fishes moved in vast
 mass along tie coast, sending off attachments into each river as they passed it's mouth, is to
 be attributed to John Gilpin and some other authors who have written fowingly on the subject. The recent careful investigations of
 naturalists indicate that the anadromous t1shes
 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 colo
 ny remains, after returning, in the deep wa
 ters opposite their river. The motive for the D movement of these shoals of anadromous fish,
 es, or rather how it is melted, has scarcely
 been explained. The life of the fishes has
 always been mystery. It is not search for fOod as they do not eat while ill fresh water {; | the opening of hundreds of stonachs will fail
 to find food present It is an easy disposal of
 the question as to how each colony recognizes it's native river to say ''t is instinctive." So
 it is also, when the butchers horse recognizes 1 tue familiar gates; but we have some evidence
 as to what senses he uses. The fishes, probably,
 are prompted by functional disturbance from
 the tumid oVaries and spermaries, and melted to movement. The courses of the sea, un-
 marked as they are,. are within each colony's limit, their habitual pathways. An unerring
 capacity in the fish for finding it's own river may be no more than that which guides the
 hermit crab to the shell of the natica The
 latter goes to hide it's sensitive body, with an apparent nervous trcpldation at it's unprotect-
 ed condition. The former, with an uneasiness
 of body from the functional changes it is un- dergong is impelled to activity. The trans
 mitted habit of ascending the stream is, as it
 were, blended and alloyeds with the substance
 of the nerves, and aroused by it's condition, carries it, without conscious purpose, into the
 river of it's prOgenitors and its own. The inn pulses of the fish are only in slightly more complicated series than those of the crab
 Thatit should be instinct for specific stream,
 established through inheritance of many gener-
 atons, it is easier to understand than that it is a sort of memory of the place of it's immature life, as the theory of fish culture makes it, and
 as observation seems to sustain. Inthe waters of the Delaware, where there were no sal
 mon originally, the young salmon placed in
 Bushkill Creek returned after five years, and
 were taken, not only in the Delaware River,
 but the larger lunberin the neighborhood of Bushkill Creek. 1t is not essential that all the fishes should have this impelling influence,
 whatever it may be, as, like gregarious man.
 mals and birds. they flock together, following the leadership of whichever for the tune takes it. The idea Is suggested that the sense may be the guiding agent, that fish goes nosing along the coast, or tasting the streams, until it recognizes it's own The convexity of the
 ccrnea 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 to the suggestion that these are employed. The, following occurrence, how ever, would seem to decide to the contrary
 The Russian River, emptying into the Pacific, north of San Francisco. had it's mouth entirely
 closed by the waves during the 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 qf the salmon into some of the.Pa- cifc rivers is a frenzied advance over shoals, rapids, and cascades, far into thin streams and brooks, wherS they arrive battered and weary,
 tou accomplish their exhaustiye4reproduetiv
 labors, and drop back, the sport of the current,
 dead and dylng, toward the sea. ---Ihe l1te
 Prof Janses ". Milner, tn Harper's Maga-
 zJHlS,I $ a.fIE .h. USE 't'4' '