The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1894-02-08
PASTURAGE FOR FISH.
Animal Fodder That Affords Food
for the Denizens Of the Sea.
TAe swarming Myrisds OF Submarine
Creatures Consume vast Quantities
of the Small shell-Flsh rs Well
A Great StOrehouse.

of the Small Shell-Fish rs Well
Great storehouse.
The sea has it's pastursge as has the
land, says the New York Times, but |
the herbage of the animal, not the
vegetable, kingdom; It's 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
among them is that formed of various
small inollusks and crustacea of the
polar regions, called by whalemen
'sbrit," or "whal efeed," which is a
veritable mass of floating fodder.
Backward and forward through its
densely compacted fields rushes, with
widely-gaping jaws, the great arctic
whale, engulfing 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 number, and like them they
transmute the raw material of the soil
into fit 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,
it extracts therefrom 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 it's substance. It's solubility,
however, readily exposes it to drain
age into water courses, thereby find
ing it's ultimate passage, with
grosser material, to the sea, in whose
quiet waters it is deposited. For the
better assimilation of this organic de-
posit the menhaden's mouth is fur
nished with hundreds of fine bristles,
which enable it to strain it's food after
the manner of the arctic whale. A
closure of it's toothless jaws forms a
natural colander, whereby the coarser
are separated from the finer particles,
which latter only are swallowed. Inas-
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 it's 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 finny
occupants, for, with perhaps the ex-
ception of the nearly extinct monster,
there is hardly a marine creature
whose subsistence is mainly or directly
derived thereffom.
In variety and extent the animal life
of the ocean is overwhelming in its
immensity and immeasurably beyond
that existing upon the land. In all its
varying depths, and in its every lati-
tude, it teens with animate creatures.
In it's lower profound, where eternal
darkness reigns; in its shadows; in its
middle depths, in the regions of eter-
nal ice, and, beneath the equators
burning sun, its waters swarm with
the larger and the lesser, the lower
and the higher forms of marine life.
The land affords no measure of com,
parison. 1t has it's bare and sun
scorched deserts, it's silent stretches OF
barren ice and snow; but the sea has
no waste places; its every drop is pos
sessed of some 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, OF
converters of raw material into ali.
mentary substance, are the mollusks, OF
shellfish, but of like contributing char
acter is the menhaden. The need
therefore, of its existence in swarming
myriads 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
along our coast exceeds in weight that
of the entire human population of the
globe, and yet the surviving multitude
Is impressive in it's vastness.
IT, ID 49,