BY PROF. G. BROWN GOODE.
PART I.
When any portion of the earth is colonized by civilized man, an era of change and readjustment at once begins. The untilled plain, the primeval forest, the bridgeless river, the malaria-breathing swamp, and the jungle—lurking place for beasts of prey—are all obstructions which must be removed from the highway of social and industrial progress. Until a new environment had been created, the colonists of Virginia and New England were like helpless children, compared with the Indians whom they had come to disinherit. The hills were soon cleared, and the water-courses dried up, swamps were drained, and lakes were made in the valleys, the plains were plowed and planted with exotic vegetation, and great regions of land were entirely changed in character by irrigation and the use of manure. The New World has in two centuries become in very truth a new world, for its physical features have been entirely reconstructed. The aboriginal man retreated before the advancing strides of civilization, and has now been practically exterminated, at least east of the Mississippi River.
The manner in which the man of European descent has eliminated and replaced the son of the soil is fairly typical of changes which have occurred in the animal and vegetable life of the continent. Bear, moose, caribou, deer, wolf, beaver, and all other large animals have been entirely destroyed in many parts of the country, and the time is not far remote when they will exist among us only in a state of partial or entire domestication. The prairie chicken once reared its brood in Massachusetts, but is now never seen east of the Alleghenies. The alligator is fast being exterminated in Florida and Mississippi, and the buffalo is now rarely to be seen except in captivity. The sea cow of the north Pacific, the great auk of New England and Newfoundland stand with the dodo, the moa, and the zebra in the list of animals which have become extinct within the memory of man, and the list will continue to increase. A similar story might be told for birds, reptiles, and plants. The rattlesnake is retreating to the mountain tops, the turkey, the pigeon, the woodpecker and hosts of others are disappearing, the medicinal plant ginseng, once so important in the Alleghenies, is almost a rarity to botanists.
The aboriginal animals and plants go. They are replaced by others, which in that struggle for existence which plays so important a part in determining careers for plants and animals, have become particularly well fitted to be man’s companions. The clover, the ox-eye daisy, the buttercup, the thistle, the mullein, the dandelion, followed the European to America, and with them the broad-leaved plantain, which, as every one knows, the Indians called “the white man’s foot,” because it sprung up at once in every meadow where the soles of his shoes had touched. With these came the European mouse, the rat, the cat, the dog. The browsing herds of deer and buffalo were replaced by oxen, horses and sheep, and the greedy, quarrelsome, impertinent sparrow was permitted to drive out the native birds which many of us would have been glad to keep as relics of the old dispensation.
Not less important in many regions have been the changes in the life in the waters. In many of our streams and lakes the fish, formerly abundant, have been entirely exterminated. Sometimes, perhaps we may charitably say usually, this has been the result of ignorance, but often, I fear, it may be ascribed to recklessness or cupidity.
Fishes may be grouped, according to their habits, into two classes—resident and migratory. Representatives of each of these classes may be found both in fresh water and in the sea. Among resident fresh water fishes may be mentioned the perch, the catfish, suckers and dace, the pike and pickerel, the black bass. Resident sea fishes are typified by the flounders, cod, sheepshead, blackfish and sea bass, which are found near the shore in winter as well as summer. In cold climates, resident fishes always retreat in winter into deeper water to avoid the cold, and if they can not get beyond its reach they subside into a state of torpidity or hibernation, in which all the vital functions are more or less inert. The carp, and many other kinds of fish, at this time, burrow into “kettles” or holes in the mud in the bottom of the pond, where they remain for months. A hybernating fish may be frozen solid in the middle of a cake of ice, and emerge when thawed out, unharmed.
Migratory fishes, on the other hand, are those which wander extensively from season to season. There are migrating fish in the sea, which, like the mackerel, the bluefish, the menhaden and the porgy come near our northern coasts only in the summer, and in winter retreat to regions either in the south or far out at sea unknown; others, like the smelt and the sea herring, which retreat northward in summer and only appear in quantity on the Atlantic coast of the United States in the colder months of the year.
Then there are migratory fishes which live part of the year in the rivers. Such are the shad and the river-herrings or alewives, which leave the sea in the spring and ascend to the river heads to spawn, and the salmon, which does likewise, to spawn in the brooklets in November and December. Still more remarkable is the eel, which breeds in the sea, where the male eels always remain, while the young females, when as large as darning needles, ascend in the spring to inland lakes and streams, there to remain, until, after three or four years, they are grown to maturity, when they descend to salt water, to reproduce their kind and die.