The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1896-04-10
The Inyl.lhle Food Of Fish.

them to lose weight and die, and that
flour, often used for the same purpose,
soon poisons them, though, on the 9th
err hand, the typhoid bacillus is de-
stroyed by passing through the oys-
ter's alimentary canal.
The latter discovery will be good
news to the owners of oyster-beds
But the study of bacteriology is new
one. What strikes the average reader
as. more curious is the lateness Of the
discovery that the food commonly used
in shops to fatten oysters disagrees
with and kills them. Yet it is only one
of the results of what, until recently
was very general ignorance OF the
main food supply, not only OF shell-tish
like the oyster but of all the swarmlng
vertebrate fishes of the sea except such
as are entirely carnivorous and live by
preying upon other fish. The food or
river fishes was better known; but
what was, until recently, thought to be
their principal food now appears to
play only limited part in their main
tenance, and the common fisherman's
view that river fishes, like robins, live
mainly on worms and grubs, with
change to May fly in the season, and
occasional feasts of ground-bait and
paste, Is almost as far removed from
fact as the showman's description OF
the elephants diet as consisting main
ly of cakes and hay.
But the case Of the river fish did not
settle the obvious problem suggested
by the question of the food supply in
the sea. The sea, except in the shal-
low water fringe along the shore, is de-
void of vegetables. 1t contains In gen
eral no growth of weeds and plants to
harbor swarms of possible food crea-
lures with their eggs and larvae, and
where such vegetable growths 40 oc-
cur as in floating weeds of the Sargas-
SO sea, a race of fish and crustaceans
at once appears, limited to that locall-
| ty,and obviously led from that source
alone Neither does the sea, except IN
certain areas, greatly abound in verte-
| brate fish. You may catch large hsh
at any point on the voyage in the mar
row seas from Gibraltar down the
Mediterranean to Alden. But the open
seas are not full of the fry for fsn,
which might form a good supply for
| others, and in the Atlantic, except ON
the Newfoundland banks, there are no
| fish found near the surface at all. A
bucket of Atlantic water is to the eye
simply a vessel of transparent prime
unfouled with weed, void of fish, and
in most cases, not visibly infested with
| any form of floating marine organisms
Yet at any moment shoals Of fish num-
bering millionsk Of individuals may
elect to enter this apparently foodless
waste; the herring-shoals disappear
into the deep Atlantic, and return i'll
good condition, oily and exuberant,
and the whales find sufficient food to
make them the --latest" creatures in
creation.
Many Of the whales are carnivorous;
some, including sthe fright whale,
have long been known to live on small
a-crustaceans, which were supposed
to be found I'M exceptional numbers in
the arctic seas But the case of the
typical "shoal' fish, such as pilchar,ls
and herrings, offered special difficult
ties. When caught near land they
| were often found to have been living
on sand-eels roe and small fish and
crabs. But in the greater number CT
cases the contents of their stomachs
were quite undergraduate, and the i'm
mense size Of the shoals increased the
difficulty of believing that on the mi
grafton they could live on fish or On
vegetable food. For fish moving in a
serried shoal extending for a square
mile, and perhaps thirty feet deep, it
would be impossible to find room to
chase and capture smaller fish, even
supposing these could be found in suffi-
Gent numbers to form food for the
numberless behring's. The rapidify
and order of their movements make il
equally unlikely that they should stop
to chew and browse on vegetables
even when arrived in the shallow seas
where seaweeds grow 1t was just DOS
sible that previous to spawning the fish
could for a time abstain from Food
But 1t was equally certain that afe1
spawning their numbers were the
same, and that they must require food
and that in large quantities, in an area
no greater than that occupied by the
herring or pilchard shoal, SO long as
the fish remained in that formation
The explanation is that the microscope
ic creatures which are in parts of the
Atlantic massed so thfckly in the water
as to discolor the surface, and sive
abundant food for the whale, are pres
emit, not so thickly, but in number:
comparable to the notes in the air. ii
all parts of the sea. For the purposes
of the herring and the pilchard, anc
countless other vertebrate fish, shell
fish, and zoophytes, the upper waters
of the sea are in fact nutritive soup
teeming with food exactly suited to
their needs. These microscopic erea'
lures are the basis of all the larger life
of the ocean, and in a great degree o.
the growth and increase of fresh-watel
fishes. Some of these tiny creature:
are water-feas, others like carapacet
shrimps, others are forms of the enc
eyed microscopic monster of the ponds
the Cyclops All are of prodigious fe
cundity, and proof against astonishin:
changes of temperature, and the egg
and young, the microscopic Offspring
of the water midgets, peryade ever!
drop of the surface-ocean, the river
and the ponds.-London Spectator.