CHAPTER IV.
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 theSalmonidæ, 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 otherSalmonidæ: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 littlerock-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 intothe 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 whatcaviareis 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 potencyof 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 withinmillions, 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 youngin 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 ofthe 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.
THE VIVIPAROUS-FISH AND ITS YOUNG.
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-strickenfish, 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 nosystem 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 Indiansor 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 fourteenfish. 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 ledto 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 thinkthey 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 theEmbiotocidæis 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 thewidened 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 seena 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 theoutsideof 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 betweeneach 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, andblowit 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 ofDitrema, 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 aPomotis(belonging to the familyPercidæ): the northernPomotis(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 aSparus; the gilthead (S. auratus) may be taken as a type suggesting the resemblance. This fish is taken in large numbers in theMediterranean, 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 femaleDitrema 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,videAppendix, vol. ii.