This handsome little stickleback, though smaller in size than his brethren, is vastly more abundant. Sir J. Richardson speaks of it ‘as being common in the Saskatchawan, ranging as far north as the 65th parallel.’ So abundant are they in the lakes and pools about Cumberland House, east of the Rocky Mountains, that sledge-loads are dipped out with wooden bowls, and used for feeding the dogs. I have seen cartloads of these tiny fish in a single pool, left by the receding waters after the summer floods, on the Sumass prairie and banks of the Chilukweyuk river. As the water rapidly evaporated, the miserable captives huddled closer and closer together, starving with hunger and panting for air, but without the remotest chance of escape. The sticklebacks die and decompose, or yield banquets to the bears, weasels, birds, and beetles; the pool dries, and in a few weeks not a trace or record remains of the dead host of fishes. In the smaller streams, a bowl dipped into the water where the sticklebacks were thickest, could be readily filled with fish.
Sticklebacks are the most voracious little gourmands imaginable, devourers of everything, and cannibals into the bargain; tearing their wounded comrades into fragments, they greedily swallow them. I have often taken this species (G. concinnus) in Esquimalt Harbour, where they are very plentiful during the winter months. The natives of Kamtschatka make use of a stickleback (G. obolarius), which they obtain in great quantities, not only as food for the sledge-dogs, but for themselves also, by making them into a kind of soup. West of the Rocky Mountains I have never seen the Indians use them as an article of diet, not from any dislike to the fish, but simply because there are larger and better fishes quite as abundant, and as easily procurable. Whether there are any species in the North-west, strictly marine, building their nests in the sea and never entering fresh-water, I am unable to say.
The Fifteen-spine Stickleback (Gasterosteus spinachia) is along our own coasts strictly a tenant of the ocean, and makes a nest of seaweeds glued together with an adhesive mucus, in the same way as the nests of our little friends are cemented, that seek as their nursery the clear cold streams of British Columbia, Oregon, and Vancouver Island.
The Bullhead.—The stickleback has a near relative, with a name nearly as ugly as the owner, ‘Bullhead’ being certainly not suggestive of beauty! With such a name, we are the less disappointed to find the entire family of our friends ill-favoured, prickly, hard-skinned, and as uncomfortable to handle as to look at. Plates of scaly armour cover the head, from which sprout sharp spines, like a crop of horns; between these are tubercles that have the appearance of being rivets. The body looks like an appendage, tapering away to a mere nothing at the tail. There are many species frequenting the lakes and rivers of British Columbia, during the summer months, for the purpose of spawning. On their return to the sea, swarms of young bullheads, of various species, regularly follow the ebb and flow of the tide; and in rough weather every breaker, as it rushes up the shelving shingle, carries a freight of tiny fish, that are left struggling amid the pebbles in thousands, to be dragged back and floated out again by the succeeding wave, or to find a last home in the stomachs of the sea-birds.
The bullhead does not actually build a nest, like the stickleback, but makes an egg-house, on the bottom of some slowly-running stream. The male usually selects a hollow under a boulder, or a space betwixt two stones, and shoves out the lesser pebbles and gravel, to form a pit. This accomplished, several females are in turn induced to deposit their roe, having done which they are driven off by the male, who supplies the milt, then shovels the sand and pebbles, with his huge horny head, over the treasure, until it is completely covered: more females, more eggs and milt, more shovelling, until the affair is completed to the bullhead papa’s satisfaction. Now stand clear all thievish prowlers! Let anything of reasonable size venture near—then head down, and plying all his propellers to their utmost power, he charges at them, driving his horns in to the very hilt; free again, seizes hold with his mouth—thus biting and stabbing, until he kills or routs his foe. I am not able to say exactly how long the eggs are incubating, but, as nearly as I could observe them (in the Sumass and Chilukweyuk streams), in about eight weeks the young escape from the egg-house. The females were invariably driven away, with the same ferocity as other unwelcome guests, from the depositing the spawn to the exit of the infant fish: then old and young disappear into deeper water, and are seldom seen again.
During the winter, I constantly obtained the bullheads from out the seine-nets used in Esquimalt Harbour to procure fish for the supply of Victoria market. Rejected by the fishermen, the Indians greedily gathered up the despised fishes, broiled them over the lodge-fire empaled on a slender twig, then feasted right-royally on the grilled remains of the spiny martyrs.
The genus Centridermichthys is characterised as follows:—Head more or less depressed, rounded anteriorly; head and body covered with soft and scaleless skin, more or less studded with prickles or granulations; teeth in the jaws, on the vomer and palatine bones.
Centridermichthys asper (Coltus asper, Rich. F. B. A. ‘Fishes,’ p. 295), the Prickly-skinned Bullhead.—Sp. Ch.: Gill-openings separated beneath, by an isthmus; three opercular spines; crown with very small warts, back of the body with very minute spines; colour light yellowish brown, thickly dotted with spots nearly black. The length of the adult fish is seldom over three-and-a-half inches.
These tiny bullheads are common in all the streams east and west of the Cascades. They are not fond of going very far from the sea, but leave the larger rivers soon after entering them, seeking the clear rivulets and shallow lakes. In the streams flowing through the Sumass and Chilukweyuk prairies, in those flowing into Puget’s Sound, and north of it on the mainland to Fort Simpson, and in all the streams draining Vancouver Island, the prickly-skinned bullhead can be easily found in July and August. Similar in habits, and frequenting the same localities as the preceding, are several species described in the Appendix.
The Rock Cod.—Belonging to the same family is the rock cod, as it is usually styled by the fishermen who provide the Victoria and San Francisco markets; one of the best and daintiest table-fish caught in the seas round Vancouver Island. It often attains a considerable size, and being in tolerable abundance, constitutes an article of some commercial value.