THE ROUND-FISH, HERRINGS, AND VIVIPAROUS FISH.
THE ROUND-FISH (_Coregonus quadrilateralis_).—_Sp. Ch._: Colour,
yellowish-brown, paler on the sides and belly than on the back; scales
bright and glittering, each edged with a narrow border of dark-grey;
cheeks, fins, and tail, a deeper tint of the same colour as that on the
back; head one-sixth of the length (without the caudal); mouth very
small, under-jaw shorter than the upper—no teeth perceptible.
This fish has a very wide geographical range, being found as far north
(according to Sir J. Richardson) as the Mackenzie and Coppermine
rivers, east of the Rocky Mountains, and latitude 49° N. the western
side; how much farther they range north of 49° I had no opportunity of
judging.
This handsome and delicious fish, one of the _Salmonidæ_, is most
valuable as an article of food to the Indians, west of the Rocky
Mountains, the White-fish (_Coregonus albus_), or ‘Attihawmeg’ (which
means ‘reindeer of the sea’), being of like importance to those
residing east of the mountains. There the Indians frequently have
to subsist entirely on white-fish, and, at many of the fur-trading
stations, the traders get very little else to eat during nine months of
the twelve.
‘In one small lake (Lake St. Ann’s), near Fort Edmonton, forty thousand
white-fish were taken, of an average weight of three to four pounds, in
the course of three weeks.’ (_Palliser’s Exp._)
Two modes are adopted for preserving them—one that of sun-drying, the
other by freezing, in which state they may be kept perfectly sweet and
free from taint for the whole winter.
The Round-fish is seldom taken over two pounds in weight, and prior
to spawning they are loaded with fat, which on the shoulders almost
amounts to a hump, but becomes thin, watery, and insipid, after the
all-important duty of providing for their offspring is accomplished. I
am not quite sure when they return to the sea, as nothing is seen of
them after the ice sets in, towards the end of November, until their
arrival on the following year. The ova are deposited in much the same
way as that of other _Salmonidæ_: a hollow made in the gravel contains
the eggs and milt, which are covered over and abandoned—the young
fish, on its emergence from the egg, taking care of itself as best it
can.
One may journey a long way to witness a prettier or more picturesque
sight than Round-fish harvesting on the Sumass prairie: the prairie
bright and lovely; the grass fresh, green, and waving lazily; various
wild flowers, peeping coyly out from their cosy hiding-places, seem
making the most of the summer; a fresh, joyous hilarity everywhere,
pervading even the Indians, whose lodges in great numbers lie scattered
about. From the edges of the pine-forest, where the little streams came
out from the dark shadow into the sunshine, up to the lake, the prairie
was like a fair. Indians, old and young; chiefs, braves, squaws,
children, and slaves; were alike busy in capturing the round-fish, that
were swarming up the streams in thousands: so thick were they that
baits and traps were thrown aside, and hands, baskets, little nets, and
wooden bowls did the work; it was only requisite to stand in the stream
and bale out the fish. Thousands were drying, thousands had been eaten,
and as many more were wasting and decomposing on the bank. Supposing
every fish escaping the Indians, otters, and the various enemies that
it meets with in ascending the rivers, succeeded in depositing its ova,
where or how they find room to spawn, or what becomes of the offspring,
is more than I know.
Round-fish are cured by splitting and sun-drying, precisely in the same
manner as salmon. I have had very good sport angling for round-fish, by
using a rough gaudy fly. They rise readily, and struggle obstinately,
when hooked, but soon give up; turning on their side, they permit
themselves to be dragged upon the bank without attempting a flap of
resistance.
Some of these fish remain permanently, or at any rate for some time,
in fresh-water. I have often taken them in the Na-hoil-a-pit-ka river,
to get into which they must have leaped the Kettle Falls during a high
flood, being quite 800 miles from the sea; and as they are caught in
the spring, I think it fair to conclude they do not invariably return
to the sea after spawning.
HERRINGS.—The Vancouver Island Herring (_Malletta cœrulia_,
Grd.).—_Sp. Ch._: Head, about one-fifth of the total length of
the body, slender, its shape in profile somewhat fusiform; back,
bright steel-blue colour, shading away on the sides to brilliant
silvery-white; fins, yellow-white, but uniform in colour; posterior
extremity of maxillary bone extending to a vertical line drawn through
the middle of the orbit; eye, subcircular, large; colour, copper-red in
the freshly-caught fish; anterior margin of the dorsal fin, nearer the
extremity of the snout than the insertion of the caudal. The average
length is somewhat about ten inches. Indian name along the coast,
_Stole_; Skadget Indian, _Lo-see_.
There are three distinct herring arrivals, one beginning in February
and March; these fish are small, and somewhat lean. About the beginning
of April the run commences; these are finer, full of spawn, and in high
condition: in June and July, and extending through the summer, small
shoals occasionally make their appearance, but never as fine as the
April fish.
Toward the middle of April herring legions commence arriving from
seaward in real earnest; brigade follows brigade in rapid succession,
until every bay, harbour, inlet, estuary, and lagoon is literally alive
with them. Close in their rear, as camp-followers hang on the skirts of
an army, come shoals of dogfish, salmon, and fish-eating sea-birds.
I have often seen a shoal of herrings, when hotly pursued by the
dogfish, dash into a little rock-bound nook, the water lashed into
white spray by a thousand tails and fins, plied with all the power and
energy the poor struggling fish could exert to escape the dreaded foe.
A wall of rocks, right and left, ahead the shelving shingle—on they
go, and hundreds lie high-and-dry, panting on the pebbles. It is just
as well perhaps to die there, as to be torn, bitten, and eaten by the
piratical cannibals that are waging fearful havoc on the imprisoned
shoal. The dogfish wound ten times as many as they eat, and, having
satiated and gorged their greedy stomachs, swim lazily away, leaving
the dead, dying, and disabled to the tender mercies of the sea-birds
watching the battle, ever ready to pounce upon the unprotected, and end
its miseries.
Garnering the herring-crop is the Coast Indian’s best ‘sea-harvest;’
lodges spring up like mushrooms along the edges of the bays and
harbours; large fleets of canoes dot the water in every direction,
their swarthy crews continually loading them with glittering fish;
paddling ashore, they hand the cargo to the female part of the
community, and then start again for a similar freight.
Indians have various plans for catching herrings. Immense numbers are
taken with small hand-nets, literally dipping them out of the water
into the canoes; they also employ the ‘rake,’ already described as
used for taking candle-fish. One savage, sitting in the stern of his
canoe, paddles along, keeping in the herring shoal; another, having the
rounded part of the rake firmly fixed in both hands, sweeps it through
the crowded fish, from before aft, using all his force: generally
speaking, every tooth has a herring impaled on it, sometimes three or
four. It is astonishing how rapidly an Indian will fill his canoe with
herrings, using this rude and primitive contrivance.
A wholesale system of capture is practised in Puget’s Sound, Point
Discovery, and Port Townsend, where large mud-flats run out for long
distances into the sea, which are left quite dry at low-tide. Across
these flats Indians make long dams of latticework, having here and
there openings like our salmon-traps, allowing herrings to pass easily
in, but preventing their return. Shoal after shoal pass through these
‘gates,’ but are destined never to get back to their briny home. It is
not at all uncommon to take from two to three tons of fish at one tide,
by this simple but ingenious method.
When the tide is well out, and the flats clear of water, the Indians
bring down immense quantities of fir-branches, and stick them in the
mud, lay them on the ground, and, in all sorts of ways, distribute
them over the flats, within the weir-dam. On these branches the
herring-spawn gets entangled; when covered with spawn the branches are
carried to the lodges, and the fish-eggs dried in the sun. Thus dried,
and brushed into baskets, it is in appearance very much like coarse
brown sand; it is then stored away, and when eaten mixed with fish-oil
is esteemed by the Indians as the very perfection of feeding. This
spawn is to Indians what _caviare_ is to Russians; but as I do not like
either, it may be I am not an authority on its merits as a table dainty.
All herrings taken in the weirs are not eaten; the Indians dry or
otherwise preserve them, but the great use to which they appropriate
them is to extract the oil. This is a grand process, and carried
on entirely by squaws. It would be a great blessing, and save much
annoyance, if you could only leave your nose at home, or at some
distance away, during your visit to an Indian village in herring-time,
or whilst oil-making. The entire atmosphere appears saturated with the
odour of decomposing fish, rancid oil, Indians, and dogs—a perfume the
potency of which you only realise by having a thorough good sniff.
Then, if you ever forget it, or wish to indulge your olfactory organ
again, your tastes and mine, gentle reader, must widely differ. The oil
is extracted and stored away (as described in a previous chapter) in
native bottles.
I have no hesitation in stating my conviction that herring-fisheries
established east and west of Vancouver Island, or at different points
along the mainland coast, in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, or amidst
the islands in the Gulf of Georgia, would turn out most remunerative
speculations. It is true that herring-fishing has been tried, but only
on the most limited scale. To make it pay; for that, after all, is the
primary consideration; capital must be employed, and skilled hands to
manage the drying, curing, and packing. Salt can be obtained in any
quantities; wood in abundance, to make casks, build houses, boats, or
ships; herrings within _millions_, requiring neither risk nor skill to
catch. The rapidly-growing colonies of Vancouver Island and British
Columbia offer ready markets for home consumption; China, Japan, the
Sandwich Islands, and the entire coast southward from San Francisco
to Mexico, afford facilities for disposing of almost any quantity of
preserved fish. Those who undertake herring-fishing in North-western
waters on a large scale, judiciously applying capital, skilled labour,
and good management, will reap an ample harvest, and become the real
‘Herring Kings’ of the far North-west.
VIVIPAROUS FISH.—We are so accustomed to associate the production of
young fishes with eggs and milt, familiar to all as hard and soft roe
in the cured herring, that it is difficult to believe in the existence
of a fish bringing forth live young, just as do dogs, cats, rats, and
mice—only with this difference, that, in the case of the fish, the
young are perfect in every detail, when launched into the water, as the
parent, and swim away self-dependent, to feed or be fed on, as good or
ill-luck befals the little wanderer. The woodcut represents the female
fish with the young _in situ_, together with others scattered round
her, having fallen out when the walls of the abdomen were dissected
open: the drawing was made from a female fish I brought from Vancouver
Island, and now exhibiting in the Fish Room of the British Museum.
At San Francisco, as early as April, I saw large numbers of viviparous
fish in the market for sale; but then, it is an open question whether
these fish really arrive at an earlier period of the year in the Bay
of San Francisco than at Vancouver Island. I think not. That they are
taken earlier in the year is simply due to the fact, that the fishermen
at San Francisco have better nets and fish in deeper water, than the
Indians, and consequently take the fish earlier. The habit of the fish
is clearly to come into shallow water when the period arrives for
producing its live young; and from the fact that some of these fish are
occasionally taken at all periods of the year, I am induced to believe
that they do not in reality migrate, but only retire into deeper water
along the coast, there to remain during the winter months, reappearing
in the shallow bays and estuaries in June and July, or perhaps earlier,
for reproductive purposes; here they remain until September, and then
entirely disappear.
[Illustration: THE VIVIPAROUS-FISH AND ITS YOUNG.]
They swim close to the surface in immense shoals, and numbers are
very craftily taken by the Indians, who literally frighten the fish
into their canoes. At low-tide, when a shoal of fish is in the bay,
or up one of those large inlets that intersect the coast-line, the
savages get the fish between the bank (or the rocks, as it may be) and
the canoe, and then paddle with all their might and main among the
terror-stricken fish, lashing the sea with their paddles, and uttering
the most fiendish yells. Out leap the fish from the water, in their
panic to escape this (to their affrighted senses) terrible monster; and
if not ‘out of the fryingpan into the fire,’ it is out of the sea into
the canoes—which in the long run I take to be pretty much the same
thing.
It appears to be a singular trait in the character of viviparous fish,
that of leaping high out of the water on the slightest alarm. I have
often seen them jump into my boat when rowing through a shoal, which
is certainly most accommodating. The Indians also spear them: they use
a long slender haft with four barbed points, arranged in a circle, but
bent so as to make them stand at a considerable distance from each
other. With this spear they strike into a shoal of fish, and generally
impale three or four; many are caught with hooks, but they bite shily,
the only baits I have seen taken being salmon-roe nearly putrid, or
bits of crab.
Just prior to my leaving Vancouver Island, numbers were netted by some
Italian fishermen who had a seine. They found a ready sale for them
in the market, but as a table-dainty they are scarcely worth eating;
the flesh is insipid, watery, and flabby, and I am convinced that
no system of cooking or culinary skill would ever convert it into a
palatable fish.
The geographical range of viviparous fish, as far as I have any
opportunity of judging, is from the Bay of San Francisco to Sitka. It
may perhaps (and I have but little doubt that it does) extend much
farther south along the Mexican coast; but this I can only surmise,
never having seen them beyond the limits above stated. It frequents all
the bays and harbours on the east and west sides of Vancouver Island,
and is equally abundant in the Gulf of Georgia and the Straits of
Juan de Fuca; making its appearance about the same period, or perhaps
somewhat earlier, in the various inlets on the Oregon coast, from Cape
Flattery to the Bay of San Francisco. It will be just as well perhaps,
before I go into the subject of its specific characters and singular
reproductive organs, I should mention how I first stumbled upon the
fact of its being viviparous.
Soon after I arrived at Vancouver Island, I at once set to work to
investigate, as far as it lay in my power, the habits and periods of
migration of the different species of fish periodically visiting the
North-west coast. The sole means then at my disposal to obtain fish
for examination, or as specimens to send home, was to employ Indians
or catch them myself; so it happened, some of these fish were first
brought me by Indians. Cutting one down the side (the plan I usually
adopt to skin a fish, keeping the opposite side untouched), to my
intense surprise, out tumbled a lot of little fish! My wildest dreams
had never led me to suppose a fish I then thought was a bream, or
one of the perch family, could be viviparous. I at once most hastily
arrived at the conclusion that the greedy gourmand had eaten them.
Dropping my knife, I sat in a most bewildered state looking at the fish.
The first ray of light that shone in to illumine my mystification
seemed to spring from the fact, that each little fish was the model,
counterpart, and facsimile of the larger, and in shape, size, and
colour were exactly alike: from the position too they occupied in the
abdomen of the larger fish, I was led at once to see the error of my
first assumption, that they had been swallowed. Carefully dissecting
back the walls of the abdomen, I discovered a delicate membranous
bag or sac having an attachment to the upper or dorsal region, and
doubled upon itself into numerous folds or plaits, and between each
of these folds was neatly packed away a little fish; the bag was of a
bluish-white colour, and contained fourteen fish. I had no longer any
doubt that the fish was viviparous, and that it was a true and normal
case of ovarian gestation. So much for my first discovery; the details
of my subsequent examinations I shall again have occasion to refer to.
It happened most curiously that a Mr. Jackson (I believe a government
officer of the United States) was, about this same period, amusing
himself by fishing at Salsalita, and caught two viviparous fish, a male
and a female. On cutting open the female, to obtain a piece of the
belly for bait, he, like myself, was astonished at seeing a whole bevy
of tiny fish come scrambling out, and at first imagined, as I did, that
they had been swallowed. He immediately wrote a letter to Professor
Agassiz, sending the mutilated fish, having previously satisfied
himself that they had not been devoured, and stating at length his
singular discovery. The professor was astonished, and disbelieved the
possibility of the fish being viviparous, imagining some error had
crept into the statement sent him by Mr. Jackson; but other fish in a
similar state were subsequently obtained by Mr. Carey, and forwarded to
the learned professor. The fact was then most undeniably established,
that this and many other species were strictly viviparous.
I have spoken of this at some length, because it is a curious
coincidence that the same fact should have been discovered by two men
a long distance apart, about the same date, and by both in the same
way,—by sheer accident.
Now we come to a ticklish question: how are the young fish vitalised in
the abdomen of the mother? In this case I shall adopt what I conceive
to be the most straightforward course, which is candidly to give my own
thoughts, and solicit from abler, older, and better physiologists their
opinions or theories—for I sincerely think this is a question well
worth careful investigation. I believe the ova, after impregnation, at
first goes through the same transformations in the ovarium as it would
do, supposing it to have been spawned and fecundated in the ordinary
spawning-bed, but only up to a certain point; then, I think, the
membrane enfolding the ova, that have by this time assumed a fishlike
type, takes on the character and functions of a placental membrane,
and the young fish are supplied by an umbilical cord, just as in the
case of a fœtal mammal. But a third change takes place. There can be no
doubt that the young fish I cut out, and that swam away, had breathed
before they were freed from the mother; hence I am led to think that,
a short time prior to the birth of the young, sea-water has access
to this marsupial sac, washes over the infant fish, the gills assume
their normal action, and the regular systemic circle is established.
Maturity attained, the umbilical attachment snaps, and the little
fish, perfect in every detail of its organisation, is launched into
the deep, to brave its many perils, and shift for itself. The strong
transverse muscles attached to the powerful sphincter (constituting
the genital opening acting from the abdominal walls), I imagine, are
in some way concerned in admitting the sea-water, and it appears to
me a contrivance admirably adapted to effect such a purpose; but how
impregnation takes place, I may at once honestly confess—I do not know.
The male is much like the female, but more slim, and the milt just
like that of other fish. I can only conjecture that fecundation
is accomplished through the medium of the sea-water, admitted by
the curiously-contrived floodgate of the female, carrying in the
milt-germs, and washing them over the ova.
The actual period of utero-gestation I am by no means sure about, but
I am inclined to think they breed twice in the year. It is worthy of
remark that the young mature fish are very large, when compared with
the size of the mother. In a female fish eleven inches in length, the
young were three inches long—the adult fish four-and-a-half inches
high, the young an inch.
The only instance I can find recorded of a viviparous fish bearing
any analogy to the _Embiotocidæ_ is the viviparous blenny (_Zoarces
viviparus_, Cuv.). Of course I exclude the sharks and rays. Of the
viviparous blenny little or nothing appears to me to be known. On
reference to Pennant’s ‘British Zoology,’ all he says is, that it was
discovered by Schonevelde, and that Sir Robert Sibbald afterwards found
it on the Scotch coast, and it was mentioned by Linnæus in his account
of the Swedish Museum.
I quote the following paragraph verbatim from Pennant’s ‘British
Zoology.’ Speaking of the blenny, he goes on to say: ‘It is viviparous,
_bringing forth two or three hundred young at a time_. Its season of
parturition is a little after the depth of winter; before midsummer
it quits the bays and shores, and retires into the deep, where it is
commonly taken. It comes into the mouth of the River Esk at Whitby,
Yorkshire, where it is frequently taken from off the bridge.’
In Cuvier’s ‘Animal Kingdom’ (vol. i. ‘Fish’), all I can glean is that
the blenny is viviparous. Yarrel, in his ‘British Fishes,’ speaks of
a Mr. Low, who put a number of the small fishes (the young of the
blenny) in a tumbler of sea-water, in which they increased in size,
but eventually died from the want of fresh-water. Again, he quotes a
Mr. Neil, who saw in the Edinburgh market, in 1807, several dozens
of young fish escape alive from the female. ‘The arrangement of the
perfectly-formed young in the fœtal sac of the gravid female is very
remarkable.’
It is quite clear from the above quotations that there is an analogy,
if not a close one, between the reproductive organs of the blenny and
those of the viviparous fish from the North-west seas; for ‘the fœtal
sac of the gravid female’ evidently means that there is a kind of
placental sac, in which the young are contained; but it leaves us quite
as much in the dark as ever as to how fœtal life is supported. As the
ova deposited in the usual way (when fecundated) contains all that is
requisite for the development of the embryo, it is just possible that
the same process goes on in the womb of the female viviparous fish, and
that the fœtal sac is only a wrapper, formed by the widened end of the
ovary. But still I maintain that it fulfils a far more important duty.
I fear I have been rather prolix in the foregoing descriptions, but I
must plead the novelty and importance of the subject as my excuse. The
most beautiful of all the species of these fish is the sapphire perch
(so called by the traders), very plentiful in Puget’s Sound. Eighteen
exquisitely beautiful mazarine-blue lines or stripes mark its entire
length from head to tail; and above and below this line are a number
of spots of most dazzling blue, arranged in a crescent shape, about
the eyes and gill-covers. Between these spots the colour changes, as
it does in the dolphin, throwing off a kind of phosphorescent light
of varying shades of gold, purple, and green—the back bright-blue
but darker than the stripes; the belly white, marked by golden-yellow
streaks.
But now for the most important feature in the history of these
fish—that of bringing into the world their young alive,
self-dependent, and self-supporting, as perfect in their minutest
organisation as the parent-fish that gives them birth. The generative
apparatus of the female fish when in a gravid state may be defined as
a large bag or sac. Ramifying over its surface may be seen a most
complicated and strangely beautiful vascular arrangement—a network of
vessels, the use of which is clearly to convey the lifegiving fluid
to the infant fish, and carry it back again, after having served
its destined purpose, to be revivified for future use. The way this
sac is, as it were, folded, and the different compartments made for
the accommodation of the embryonic fish, is most singular, and very
difficult to describe clearly.
The best illustration I can think of is an orange. You must imagine the
orange divided into its regular number of little wedge-shaped pieces,
and each piece to represent a fish; that the rind of the orange is
a delicate membrane, having a globular shape, and easily compressed
or folded. You now desire to fit the pieces together again in the
original orange-shape, but you must begin on the _outside_ of the
globular membrane, pressing in with each section a fold of membrane
(remember that each represents a fish); when each piece is in its
place, you will still have the sac in its rounded form, but the rind or
membrane has been folded in with the different pieces. If I have made
myself understood, it will be seen that there must be a double fold of
membrane between each portion of orange. This is exactly the way the
fish are packed in this novel placental sac. If it were practicable
to remove each fish from its space, and the sac retain its normal
shape, there would be twelve or fourteen openings (depending upon the
number of young fish), the wall of each division being a double fold
of membrane—the double edges wrapping or, as it were, folding over
the fish. Now make a hole in the end of this folded bag, and _blow_ it
full of air, and you get at once the globe-shaped membranous sac I have
likened to an orange.
The fish are always arranged to economise space: when the head of
a young fish points to the head of its mother, the next to it is
reversed, and looks towards the tail. I am quite convinced that the
young fish are packed away by doubling or folding the sac in the way
I have endeavoured to describe. I have again and again dissected out
this ovarian bag, filled with fish in various stages of development,
and floating it in saltwater, have, with a fine-pointed needle, opened
the edges of the double membranous divisions that enwrap the fish—(the
amount of overlapping is of course greater when the fish is in its
earlier stages of development). On separating the edges of the sac,
out the little fishes pop. I have obtained them in all stages of their
growth,—but sometimes (and this not once or twice, but often) have
set free the young fish from its dead mother. Thus prematurely cut
loose from its membranous prison, the infant captive, revelling in its
newly-acquired liberty, swam about in the saltwater, active, brisk, and
jolly, in every particular, as well able to take care and provide for
itself as its parent. The female external genital opening is situated
a little posterior to the anal opening; the orifice is at the apex,
and in the centre of a fleshy conical protuberance, which is in fact,
a powerful sphincter muscle, _moored_, as it were, in its place by two
strong muscular ropes, acting from and attached to the walls of the
abdomen.
Dr. Günther, in the British Museum Catalogue of Fishes, uses the
generic title of _Ditrema_, which I have adopted. The first glance
at the fish, as it lies on the table or on the beach, would lead you
to pronounce it a _Pomotis_ (belonging to the family _Percidæ_): the
northern _Pomotis_ (_P. vulgaris_) is a good example, and very common
along the shores of Lake Huron, where I have often caught them. Or, on
the other hand, you would be perhaps tempted to call it a _Sparus_;
the gilthead (_S. auratus_) may be taken as a type suggesting the
resemblance. This fish is taken in large numbers in the Mediterranean,
and occasionally on the French and Spanish coasts. But a close
investigation into the more marked generic and specific characters,
apart from their reproducing organs, at once clearly shows they belong
neither to the one family nor the other; they differ much more from the
percoids than from the sparoids, but the cycloid scales remove them
at once from the sparoids, in which the scales present a very uniform
etenoid type.
The illustration represents a female _Ditrema argenteum_, Brit. Mus.
Cat., ‘Fishes.’
_Amphistichus argenteus_, Agass., Am. Journ., 1854; Soc. Nat. Hist.,
1861, p. 131; Pacif. R. R. Exp., ‘Fishes,’ p. 201.
_Mytilophagus fasciatus_ (Gibbons).
_Amphistichus similes_ (Grd.).
The middle dorsal spines are either nearly as long as, or somewhat
longer, than the posterior; scales on the cheek, in five series,
somewhat irregularly disposed. The height of the body is rather
more than a fourth of the total length (without caudal); jaws equal
anteriorly; the maxillary extends to below the centre of the orbit;
lips thin, the fold of the lower interrupted in the middle. For
description of species, _vide_ Appendix, vol. ii.