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A POPULAR ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF THE LONG-EARED SUNFISH, LEPOMIS MEGALOTIS

What is a Fish?—A fish is a back-boned animal which lives in the water and cannot ever live very long anywhere else. Its ancestors have always dwelt in water, and most likely its descendents will forever follow their example. So, as the water is a region very different from the fields or the woods, a fish in form and structure must be quite unlike all the beasts and birds that walk or creep or fly above ground, breathing air and being fitted to live in it. There are a great many kinds of animals called fishes, but in this all of them agree: all have some sort of a back-bone, all of them breathe their life long by means of gills, and none have fingers or toes with which to creep about on land.

The Long-eared Sunfish.—If we would understand a fish, we must first go and catch one. This is not very hard to do, for there are plenty of them in the little rushing brook or among the lilies of the pond. Let us take a small hook, put on it an angleworm or a grasshopper—no need to seek an elaborate artificial fly—and we will go out to the old "swimming-hole" or the deep eddy at the root of the old stump where the stream has gnawed away the bank in changing its course. Here we will find fishes, and one of them will take the bait very soon. In one part of the country the first fish that bites will be different from the first one taken in some other. But as we are fishing in the United States, we will locate our brook in the centre of population of our country. This will be to the northwest of Cincinnati, among the low wooded hills from which clear brooks flow over gravelly bottoms toward the Ohio River. Here we will catch sunfishes of certain species, or maybe rock bass or catfish: any of these will do for our purpose. But one of our sunfishes is especially beautiful—mottled blue and golden and scarlet, with a long, black, ear-like appendage backward from his gill-covers—and this one we will keep and hold for our first lesson in fishes. It is a small fish, not longer than your hand most likely, but it can take the bait as savagely as the best, swimming away with it with such force that you might think from the vigor of its pull that you have a pickerel or a bass. But when it comes out of the water you see a little, flapping, unhappy, living plate of brown and blue and orange, with fins wide-spread and eyes red with rage.

Fig. 2.—Long-eared Sunfish, Lepomis megalotis (Rafinesque). (From Clear Creek, Bloomington, Indiana.) Family Centrarchidæ.

Form of the Fish.—And now we have put the fish into a bucket of water, where it lies close to the bottom. Then we take it home and place it in an aquarium, and for the first time we have a chance to see what it is like. We see that its body is almost elliptical in outline, but with flat sides and shaped on the lower parts very much like a boat. This form we see is such as to enable it to part the water as it swims. We notice that its progress comes through the sculling motion of its broad, flat tail.

Face of a Fish.—When we look at the sunfish from the front we see that it has a sort of face, not unlike that of higher animals. The big eyes, one on each side, stand out without eyelids, but the fish can move them at will, so that once in a while he seems to wink. There isn't much of a nose between the eyes, but the mouth is very evident, and the fish opens and shuts it as it breathes. We soon see that it breathes water, taking it in through the mouth and letting it flow over the gills, and then out through the opening behind the gill-covers.

How the Fish Breathes.—If we take another fish—for we shall not kill this one—we shall see that in its throat, behind the mouth-cavity, there are four rib-like bones on each side, above the beginning of the gullet. These are the gill-arches, and on each one of them there is a pair of rows of red fringes called the gills. Into each of these fringes runs a blood-vessel. As the water passes over it the oxygen it contains is absorbed through the skin of the gill-fringe into the blood, which thus becomes purified. In the same manner the impurities of the blood pass out into the water, and go out through the gill-openings behind. The fish needs to breathe just as we do, though the apparatus of breathing is not the same. Just as the air becomes loaded with impurities when many people breathe it, so does the water in our jar or aquarium become foul if it is breathed over and over again by fishes. When a fish finds the water bad he comes to the surface to gulp air, but his gills are not well fitted to use undissolved air as a substitute for that contained in water. The rush of a stream through the air purifies the water, and so again does the growth of water plants, for these in the sunshine absorb and break up carbonic acid gas, and throw out oxygen into the water.

Teeth of the Fish.—On the inner side of the gill-arch we find some little projections which serve as strainers to the water. These are called gill-rakers. In our sunfish they are short and thick, seeming not to amount to much but in a herring they are very long and numerous.

Behind the gills, at the opening of the gullet, are some roundish bones armed with short, thick teeth. These are called pharyngeals. They form a sort of jaws in the throat, and they are useful in helping the little fish to crack shells. If we look at the mouth of our live fish, we shall find that when it breathes or bites it moves the lower jaw very much as a dog does. But it can move the upper jaw, too, a little, and that by pushing it out in a queer fashion, as though it were thrust out of a sheath and then drawn in. If we look at our dead fish, we shall see that the upper jaw divides in the middle and has two bones on each side. On one bone are rows of little teeth, while the other bone that lies behind it has no teeth at all. The lower jaw has little teeth like those of the upper jaw, and there is a patch of teeth on the roof of the mouth also. In some sunfishes there are three little patches, the vomer in the middle and the palatines on either side.

The tongue of the fish is flat and gristly. It cannot move it, scarce even taste its food with it, nor can it use it for making a noise. The unruly member of a fish is not its tongue, but its tail.

How the Fish Sees.—To come back to the fish's eye again. We say that it has no eyelids, and so, if it ever goes to sleep, it must keep its eyes wide open. The iris is brown or red. The pupil is round, and if we could cut open the eye we should see that the crystalline lens is almost a perfect sphere, much more convex than the lens in land animals. We shall learn that this is necessary for the fish to see under water. It takes a very convex lens or even one perfectly round to form images from rays of light passing through the water, because the lens is but little more dense than the water itself. This makes the fish near-sighted. He cannot see clearly anything out of water or at a distance. Thus he has learned that when, in water or out, he sees anything moving quickly it is probably something dangerous, and the thing for him to do is to swim away and hide as swiftly as possible.

In front of the eye are the nostrils, on each side a pair of openings. But they lead not into tubes, but into a little cup lined with delicate pink tissues and the branching nerves of smell. The organ of smell in nearly all fishes is a closed sac, and the fish does not use the nostrils at all in breathing. But they can indicate the presence of anything in the water which is good to eat, and eating is about the only thing a fish cares for.

Color of the Fish.—Behind the eye there are several bones on the side of the head which are more or less distinct from the skull itself. These are called membrane bones because they are formed of membrane which has become bony by the deposition in it of salts of lime. One of these is called the opercle, or gill-cover, and before it, forming a right angle, is the preopercle, or false gill-cover. On our sunfish we see that the opercle ends behind in a long and narrow flap, which looks like an ear. This is black in color, with an edging of scarlet as though a drop of blood had spread along its margin. When the fish is in the water its back is dark greenish-looking, like the weeds and the sticks in the bottom, so that we cannot see it very plainly. This is the way the fish looks to the fishhawks or herons in the air above it who may come to the stream to look for fish. Those fishes which from above look most like the bottom can most readily hide and save themselves. The under side of the sunfish is paler, and most fishes have the belly white. Fishes with white bellies swim high in the water, and the fishes who would catch them lie below. To the fish in the water all outside the water looks white, and so the white-bellied fishes are hard for other fishes to see, just as it is hard for us to see a white rabbit bounding over the snow.

Fig. 3.—Common sunfish, Eupomotis gibbosus (Linnæus). Natural size. (From life by R. W. Shufeldt.)

But to be known of his own kind is good for the sunfish, and we may imagine that the black ear-flap with its scarlet edge helps his mate and friends to find him out, where they swim on his own level near the bottom. Such marks are called recognition-marks, and a great many fishes have them, but we have no certain knowledge as to their actual purpose.

We are sure that the ear-flap is not an ear, however. No fishes have any external ear, all their hearing apparatus being buried in the skull. They cannot hear very much: possibly a great jar or splash in the water may reach them, but whenever they hear any noise they swim off to a hiding-place, for any disturbance whatever in the water must arouse a fish's anxiety. The color of the live sunfish is very brilliant. Its body is covered with scales, hard and firm, making a close coat of mail, overlapping one another like shingles on a roof. Over these is a thin skin in which are set little globules of bright-colored matter, green, brown, and black, with dashes of scarlet, blue, and white as well. These give the fish its varied colors. Some coloring matter is under the scales also, and this especially makes the back darker than the lower parts. The bright colors of the sunfish change with its surroundings or with its feelings. When it lies in wait under a dark log its colors are very dark. When it rests above the white sands it is very pale. When it is guarding its nest from some meddling perch its red shades flash out as it stands with fins spread, as though a water knight with lance at rest, looking its fiercest at the intruder.

When the sunfish is taken out of the water its colors seem to fade. In the aquarium it is generally paler, but it will sometimes brighten up when another of its own species is placed beside it. A cause of this may lie in the nervous control of the muscles at the base of the scales. When the scales lie very flat the color has one appearance. When they rise a little the shade of color seems to change. If you let fall some ink-drops between two panes of glass, then spread them apart or press them together, you will see changes in the color and size of the spots. Of this nature is the apparent change in the colors of fishes under different conditions. Where the fish feels at its best the colors are the richest. There are some fishes, too, in which the male grows very brilliant in the breeding season through the deposition of red, white, black, or blue pigments, or coloring matter, on its scales or on its head or fins, this pigment being absorbed when the mating season is over. This is not true of the sunfish, who remains just about the same at all seasons. The male and female are colored alike and are not to be distinguished without dissection. If we examine the scales, we shall find that these are marked with fine lines and concentric striæ, and part of the apparent color is due to the effect of the fine lines on the light. This gives the bluish lustre or sheen which we can see in certain lights, although we shall find no real blue pigment under it. The inner edge of each scale is usually scalloped or crinkled, and the outer margin of most of them has little prickly points which make the fish seem rough when we pass our hand along his sides.

Fig. 4.—Ozorthe dictyogramma (Herzenstein). A Japanese blenny, from Hakodate: showing increased number of lateral lines, a trait characteristic of many fishes of the north Pacific.

The Lateral Line.—Along the side of the fish is a line of peculiar scales which runs from the head to the tail. This is called the lateral line. If we examine it carefully, we shall see that each scale has a tube from which exudes a watery or mucous fluid. Behind these tubes are nerves, and although not much is known of the function of the tubes, we can be sure that in some degree the lateral line is a sense-organ, perhaps aiding the fish to feel sound-waves or other disturbances in the water.

The Fins of the Fish.—The fish moves itself and directs its course in the water by means of its fins. These are made up of stiff or flexible rods growing out from the body and joined together by membrane. There are two kinds of these rays or rods in the fins. One sort is without joints or branches, tapering to a sharp point. The rays thus fashioned are called spines, and they are in the sunfish stiff and sharp-pointed. The others, known as soft rays, are made up of many little joints, and most of them branch and spread out brush-like at their tips. In the fin on the back the first ten of the rays are spines, the rest are soft rays. In the fin under the tail there are three spines, and in each fin at the breast there is one spine with five soft rays. In the other fins all the rays are soft.

The fin on the back is called the dorsal fin, the fin at the end of the tail is the caudal fin, the fin just in front of this on the lower side is the anal fin. The fins, one on each side, just behind the gill-openings are called the pectoral fins. These correspond to the arms of man, the wings of birds, or the fore legs of a turtle or lizard. Below these, corresponding to the hind legs, is the pair of fins known as the ventral fins. If we examine the bones behind the gill-openings to which the pectoral fins are attached, we shall find that they correspond after a fashion to the shoulder-girdle of higher animals. But the shoulder-bone in the sunfish is joined to the back part of the skull, so that the fish has not any neck at all. In animals with necks the bones at the shoulder are placed at some distance behind the skull.

If we examine the legs of a fish, the ventral fins, we shall find that, as in man, these are fastened to a bone inside called the pelvis. But the pelvis in the sunfish is small and it is placed far forward, so that it is joined to the tip of the "collar-bone" of the shoulder-girdle and pelvis attached together. The caudal fin gives most of the motion of a fish. The other fins are mostly used in maintaining equilibrium and direction. The pectoral fins are almost constantly in motion, and they may sometimes help in breathing by starting currents outside which draw water over the gills.

The Skeleton of the Fish.—The skeleton of the fish, like that of man, is made up of the skull, the back-bone, the limbs, and their appendages. But in the fish the bones are relatively smaller, more numerous, and not so firm. The front end of the vertebral column is modified as a skull to contain the little brain which serves for all a fish's activities. To the skull are attached the jaws, the membrane bones, and the shoulder-girdle. The back-bone itself in the sunfish is made of about twenty-four pieces, or vertebræ. Each of these has a rounded central part, concave in front and behind. Above this is a channel through which the great spinal cord passes, and above and below are a certain number of processes or projecting points. To some of these, through the medium of another set of sharp bones, the fins of the back are attached. Along the sides of the body are the slender ribs.

The Fish in Action.—The fish is, like any other animal, a machine to convert food into power. It devours other animals or plants, assimilates their substance, takes it over into itself, and through its movements uses up this substance again. The food of the sunfish is made up of worms, insects, and little fishes. To seize these it uses its mouth and teeth. To digest them it needs its alimentary canal, made of the stomach with its glands and intestines. If we cut the fish open, we shall find the stomach with its pyloric cæca, near it the large liver with its gall-bladder, and on the other side the smaller spleen. After the food is dissolved in the stomach and intestines the nutritious part is taken up by the walls of the alimentary canal, whence it passes into the blood.

The blood is made pure in the gills, as we have already seen. To send it to the gills the fish has need of a little pumping-engine, and this we shall find at work in the fish as in all higher animals. This engine of stout muscle surrounding a cavity is called the heart. In most fishes it is close behind the gills. It contains one auricle and one ventricle only, not two of each as in man. The auricle receives the impure blood from all parts of the body. It passes it on to the ventricle, which, being thick-walled, is dark red in color. This passes the blood by convulsive action, or heart-beating, on to the gills. From these the blood is collected in arteries, and without again returning to the heart it flows all through the body. The blood in the fish flows sluggishly. The combustion of waste material goes on slowly, and so the blood is not made hot as it is in the higher beasts and birds. Fishes have relatively little blood; what there is is rather pale and cold and has no swift current.

If we look about in the inside of a fish, we shall find close along the lower side of the back-bone, covering the great artery, the dark red kidneys. These strain out from the blood a certain class of impurities, poisons made from nerve or muscle waste which cannot be burned away by the oxygen of respiration.

The Air-bladder.—In the front part of the sunfish, just above the stomach, is a closed sac, filled with air. This is called the air-bladder, or swim-bladder. It helps the fish to maintain its place in the water. In bottom fishes it is almost always small, while fishes that rise and fall in the current generally have a large swim-bladder. The gas inside it is secreted from the blood, for the sunfish has no way of getting any air into it from the outside.

But the primal purpose of the air-bladder was not to serve as a float. In very old-fashioned fishes it has a tube connecting it with the throat, and instead of being an empty sac it is a true lung made up of many lobes and parts and lined with little blood-vessels. Such fishes as the garpike and the bowfin have lung-like air-bladders and gulp air from the surface of the water.

In the very little sunfish, when he is just hatched, the air-bladder has an air-duct, which, however, is soon lost, leaving only a closed sac. From all this we know that the air-bladder is the remains of what was once a lung, or additional arrangement for breathing. As the gills furnish oxygen enough, the lung of the common fish has fallen into disuse and thrifty Nature has used the parts and the space for another and a very different purpose. This will serve to help us to understand the swim-bladder and the way the fish came to acquire it as a substitute for a lung.

The Brain of the Fish.—The movements of the fish, like those of every other complex animal, are directed by a central nervous system, of which the principal part is in the head and is known as the brain. From the eye of the fish a large nerve goes to the brain to report what is in sight. Other nerves go from the nostrils, the ears, the skin, and every part which has any sort of capacity for feeling. These nerves carry their messages inward, and when they reach the brain they may be transformed into movement. The brain sends back messages to the muscles, directing them to contract. Their contraction moves the fins, and the fish is shoved along through the water. To scare the fish or to attract it to its food or to its mate is about the whole range of the effect that sight or touch has on the animal. These sensations changed into movement constitute what is called reflex action, performance without thinking of what is being done. With a boy, many familiar actions may be equally reflex. The boy can also do many other things "of his own accord," that is, by conscious effort. He can choose among a great many possible actions. But a fish cannot. If he is scared, he must swim away, and he has no way to stop himself. If he is hungry, and most fishes are so all the time, he will spring at the bait. If he is thirsty, he will gasp, and there is nothing else for him to do. In other words, the activities of a fish are nearly all reflex, most of them being suggested and immediately directed by the influence of external things. Because its actions are all reflex the brain is very small, very primitive, and very simple, nothing more being needed for automatic movement. Small as the fish's skull-cavity is, the brain does not half fill it.

Fig. 5.—Common Sunfish, Eupomotis gibbosus (Linnæus). Natural size. (From life by R. W. Shufeldt.)—Page 13.

The vacant space about the little brain is filled with a fatty fluid mass looking like white of egg, intended for its protection. Taking the dead sunfish (for the live one we shall look after carefully, giving him every day fresh water and a fresh worm or snail or bit of beef), if we cut off the upper part of the skull we shall see the separate parts of the brain, most of them lying in pairs, side by side, in the bottom of the brain-cavity. The largest pair is near the middle of the length of the brain, two nerve-masses (or ganglia), each one round and hollow. If we turn these over, we shall see that the nerves of the eye run into them. We know then that these nerve-masses receive the impressions of sight, and so they are called optic lobes. In front of the optic lobes are two smaller and more oblong nerve-masses. These constitute the cerebrum. This is the thinking part of the brain, and in man and in the higher animals it makes up the greater part of it, overlapping and hiding the other ganglia. But the fish has not much need for thinking and its fore-brain or cerebrum is very small. In front of these are two small, slim projections, one going to each nostril. These are the olfactory lobes which receive the sensation of smell. Behind the optic lobes is a single small lobe, not divided into two. This is the cerebellum and it has charge of certain powers of motion. Under the cerebellum is the medulla, below which the spinal cord begins. The rest of the spinal cord is threaded through the different vertebræ back to the tail, and at each joint it sends out nerves of motion and receives nerves of sense. Everything that is done by the fish, inside or outside, receives the attention of the little branches of the great nerve-cord.

The Fish's Nest.—The sunfish in the spawning time will build some sort of a nest of stones on the bottom of the eddy, and then, when the eggs are laid, the male with flashing eye and fins all spread will defend the place with a good deal of spirit. All this we call instinct. He fights as well the first time as the last. The pressure of the eggs suggests nest-building to the female. The presence of the eggs tells the male to defend them. But the facts of the nest-building and nest protection are not very well understood, and any boy who can watch them and describe them truly will be able to add something to science.