Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-08-20
By Charles Ere derick Holder two
Author of The o Torqua, of
Charles Darwin,

this lily-environed spot, reached
by so-caed lost channel that wound in and out
and finally led to a sylvan dell of woodland joys
and beauties. The entire surface mosaic
of white and green-the blossoms and leaves of
the pond-lily, the numbers of the former telling
the story that the place still free from vandals
and known only by those who satisfied to
go and look and leave the waterg garden undsturbed
The mystery to me was that 1t had not been
devastated but the real mystery several NINA
ture mountains that from the clear sandy
bottom to within foot six inches of the surface
piles of pebbles or stones about inch inch
and half long. My boat aground the
summit of one of these woodland AraratS and my
boatnan, who knew all the reefs and shoals where
black bass congregated and all the secrets of the
tribe, shook his head oninously. | suggested that
1t the ash dump of some steamer forgetting that
a steamer, if small could not have reached the
spot. Then | picked up some of the material and
found it to be stone pebbles One of the piles
four feet in height and six eight feet around
l discovered that it the nest of a fish, one
of the suckers, slvery fish about six inches long
with sucking mouth on the under side. This
Chub-sucker, as the men called it, better known
SemotinS was a home castle or nest-builder of
extraordinary talents, and the big heap of stone
was its efforts to protect its young and eggs. The
water of that region infected with yellow perch
rockbass, sunfishes and variety of small fry that
reduced the chances of life of a young Chub-sucker
to a minimum hence the parent fishes doubtless
the male, built piled up this fortress and in its
interstces the female deposited her eggs, and here
the young first appeared and found protection in
fsh's castle The nest used year after
year The ice of winter generally carried off the
top when the spring floods came, but the sucker
supplied and remedied the deficiency by dropping
more stones or pebbles upon it-buding material
that must have been brought in their sucker-like
mouths from a distance, in the immediate vicinity
of the mounds there stones or pebbles the
ground having been cleared and apparently swept
clean.
This nest is typical of what might be termed a
class of stone est-building fishes One of the most
interesting, the common sunish times will
bring pebbles and heap them up but the largest and
most conspicuous work of this kind is accomplished
by the lamprey eel. a few years ago some farmers
in the vicinity of the Saco River in sailing it.
di 5covered what appeared to be artificial dam
of stones, and it suggested that at an early
date the natives of the region had been seized with
desire to dam up the river and had started a
breakwater, but had been forced to abandon it.
The structure fifteen or twenty feet in length
three four in height and two three feet through
The theory of the human origin of the work held
Tor years but finally day an inquSitive man
went to one of the farmers, a who seemed fond
of plants, fishes and animals of all kinds, and it
was not long before he heard the story and had
examined the stone dam or breakwater and had
a well-detlned plan of 1t paper. Not only this,
he spent hours the river floating the curious