The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1894-01-26
PASTURAGE FOR FISH.
Animal Fodder That Affords Food
for the Denizens of the Sea.
The Swarming Myriads of Submarine
Creatures Consume Vast Quantities
of the Small Shell-Fish as Well
A Great StorehOuse.

of the Small Shell-Fish as Well
Great StorehOuse.
The sea has its pasturage as has the
land, says the New York Times, but
the heritage of the animal, not the
vegetable, kingdom; its areas are
shifting and variable, not fixed or
stationary Shoreward over its
immense expanse occasionally appear
those marine GASES that vary in extent.
character and composition. Notable
ameng them is that formed of various
small mollusks and crustacea of the
. polar regions, called by whalemen
''brit." or "whal efeed," which is a
veritable mass of floating fodder.
Backward and forward through its
aensely compacted fields rushes, with
widely-gaping jaws, the great arctic
whale, enguling vast quantities.
Similar to this pabulum in use and
apparent purpose is the familiar
menhaden of our coast. Like the
grasses of the far-rolling prairie are
they in nam Der, and like them they
transmute the raw material of the soil
into At and -assimilable substance for a
multitude of other forms of life; for
the menhaden seeks the bottom of
estuaries and adjacent waters, where
gather deposits of river SILT and gorg-
ing itself with the soft, clayey slime,
1t extracts therefron the organic
material brought down from the up
lands
In all soil nourishing vegetation Or
ganic matter is contained, which is
readily taken up by the roots of the
growing plant and diffused as sap
through its substance. Its solubilitV,
however, readily exposes it to drain
age into water courses, thereby find
ing its ultimate passage, with
grosser material, to the sea, in whose
quiet waters it is deposited. For the
better assimilation of this organic de-
post the menhaden's mouth is fur
nished with hundreds of fine bristles,
which enable it to strain its food after
the manner of the arctic whale. A
closure of its toothless jaws forms a
natural co1ander, whereby the coarser
are separated from the finer PARTICLES,
which latter only are swallowed. mas
much as the larger proportion of the
catch of menhaden is converted into
fertilizing material, it thus follows
that they restore to the land meas
ure of its loss, the continuance of
which infers the reversion of the sub
stance of the menhaden so utilized to
that bourne of all super-marine ma
terial, the ever-hungry, the all de-
vouring sea.
Upon the land the plant is the domi-
nant, the animal the subsidiary form
of life, of all of which latter the
former is, directly or indirectly, the
support. The vegetation of the ocean,
however, is very limited in extent and
adaptation to the sustenance of its fnny
occupants, for, with perhaps the ex-
ception Of tho nearly extinct monster,
there is hardly a marine creature
whose subsistence is mainly or directly
derived therefrom.
In variety and extent the animal life
of the ocean is overwhelming in its
immensity and UNNECESSARILY beyond
that existing upon the land. In all its
varying depths. and in it's every lati-
tude, it teens with animate creatures.
In its lower profound, where eternal
darkness reigns; in its shadows; in it's
middle depths, in the regions of eter-
nal ice, and, beneath the equator's
burning sun, its waters swarm with
the larger and the lesser, the lower
and the higher forms of marine life.
The land affords ne measure of COM
parison. 1t has it's bare and sun
soorched deserts, its silent stretches of
barren ice and snow; but the sea has
no waste places; its every drop is pos
sesSed of Somo measure of life. Only
upon the surface does the land support
its own. but in the oceans remotest
depths are found strange creatures,
with structures adapted to the enor-
nous pressure they sustain.
The upper stages of this vast and
varied scale of being are mainly de-
pendent upon the lower, as upon the
land the animal is supported by the
vegetable world. Chief among the
marine instrumentalities of life, or
converters of raw material into ali
mentary So distance, are the mollusks, or
shellfish, but of like contributing char
acter is the menhaden. The need,
therefore, of its existence in swarming
nlyriads is readily appreciated, and
renders creditable statements that
otherwise would seem too marvellous
for belief. In the opinion of compe-
tent authorities the number of menha-
den annually destroyed by other fish
i
Of the entire human population of the
globe. and yet the surviving multitude |
is impressive in its vastness