. Fishes. Fishes. Instincts, Habits, and Adaptations 47 discolored, worn, and distorted. The male is humpbacked, with sunken scales, and greatly enlarged, hooked, bent, or twisted jaws, with enlarged dog-like teeth. On reaching the spawning beds, which may be a thousand miles from the sea in the Columbia, over two thousand in the Yukon, the female de- posits her eggs in the gravel of some shallow brook. The male covers them and scrapes the gravel over them. Then both male and female drift tail foremost helplessly down the stream; none, so far as certainly known, ever survives the reproductive
. Fishes. Fishes. Instincts, Habits, and Adaptations 47 discolored, worn, and distorted. The male is humpbacked, with sunken scales, and greatly enlarged, hooked, bent, or twisted jaws, with enlarged dog-like teeth. On reaching the spawning beds, which may be a thousand miles from the sea in the Columbia, over two thousand in the Yukon, the female de- posits her eggs in the gravel of some shallow brook. The male covers them and scrapes the gravel over them. Then both male and female drift tail foremost helplessly down the stream; none, so far as certainly known, ever survives the reproductive act. The same habits are found in the five other species of salmon in the Pacific, but in most cases the individuals do not start so early nor run so far. The blue-back salmon or redfish, however, does not fall far short in these regards. The salmon of the Atlantic has a similar habit, but the distance traveled is everywhere much less, and most of the hook-jawed males drop down to the sea and survive to repeat the acts of reproduction. Catadromous fishes, as the true eel {Angnilla), reverse this order, feeding in the rivers and brackish estuaries, apparently finding their usual spawning-ground in the sea. Pugnacity of Fishes.—Some fishes are very pugnacious, al- ways ready for a quarrel with their own kind. The stickle- backs show this disposition, especially the males. In Hawaii the natives take advantage of this trait to catch the Uu {Myripristis. Fig. 33.—Squaw-fish, Ptychocheilus oregonensis (Richardson). Columbia River. murdjan), a bright crimson-colored fish found in those waters. The species lives in crevices in lava rocks. Catching a live one, the fishermen suspend it by a string in front of the rocks. It remains there with spread fins and flashing scales, and the others come out to fight it, when all are drawn to the surface by a. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration
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