A Natural History for Young People: Our Animal Friends in Their Native Homes / including mammals, birds and fishes

by Phebe Westcott Humphreys

It seems to have a natural desire to exercise towards and against all the arm with which nature has furnished it; it darts with the utmost fury upon the most formidable moving bodies; it attacks the Whale; and there are numerous and well authenticated instances of ships being perforated by the jaw of this powerful creature, while the toothed spear of the Saw-fish has been found fast in the body of a Whale which it has pierced.

In 1725, some carpenters having occasion to examine the bottom of a ship, which had just returned from the Tropical seas, found the lance of a Sword-fish buried deep in the timbers of the ship. They declared that, to drive a pointed bolt of iron of the same size and form to the same depth, would require eight or nine blows of a hammer weighing thirty pounds. From the position of the weapon it was evident that the Fish had followed the ship while under full sail; it had penetrated through the metal sheathing, and three inches and a half beyond, into the solid frame.

The Sword-fish has obstinate combats with the Saw-fish, and even the Shark, and it is supposed that when he attacks the bottom of a vessel he takes that sombre mass for the body of an enemy.

THE ARCHER FISH.

ARCHER FISH.

The idea of a Shooting-fish seems quite as odd as that of a Flying-fish, yet the Archer-fish often uses this method of bringing down its prey. For this reason he is sometimes known as the Toxotes—the word meaning a bowman or archer. Although the Archer-fish belongs to this fourth family of bony Fishes—those with spiny fins—it is not only unlike any other species of this family, but unlike any other Fish known; in that it is the only one that goes out gunning for its prey. It possesses the power of spurting water from its mouth with such force as to bring down Insects from aquatic plants within its reach. As it lives almost entirely upon these insects, it may take rather tedious gunning at times to secure enough to satisfy its hunger, and it is decidedly interesting to watch this small archer on one of his hunting expeditions.

In these four groups of cartilaginous Fish, and the four distinct sections of bony Fishes, with their numerous sub-divisions, may be classified all the different Fishes that have become known, through all the careful research of modern Naturalists. Not that they could all be described in this limited space; nor, in fact, even given separate mention. Very few have a clear idea of how many different kinds of Fishes there really are. In the long ago, when Naturalists first made a study of the inhabitants of the water, and began to write the results of their researches, it seemed surprising to them to discover nearly a hundred distinct species. In their different families, Pliny, the Naturalist, described ninety-four species of Fish. Later Linnaeus characterized four hundred and seventy-eight. And, marvellous as it may seem, the Naturalists of the present day know upwards of thirteen thousand, a tenth of which are fresh water Fishes. While all these numerous species may possess some distinct peculiarity, they are sure to possess other characteristics that will classify them with some of these families. And after becoming familiar with the characteristics of this limited number of groups and families we may feel acquainted, to a certain extent, with this whole great throng of nearly thirteen thousand Fishes.

We often hear the fact regretted, that so many of the larger Fish live almost entirely by devouring smaller species. And taking into consideration the immense quantities consumed by mankind each year, not only as they are caught fresh from the water, but the hundreds and thousands of barrels and cans of dried and pickled Fish that are shipped all over the world from the great Salmon and Cod and Herring fisheries, it is sometimes thought that, in time, the different species of Fish must surely be exhausted.

But when we think of this marvellous number of species, and then remember the quantities of a single kind sometimes found in a single shoal (like that of the Herrings, quoted, in which twenty-two millions were caught in two days), there appears to be little danger of the Fishes becoming scarce; for it seems almost past belief that there can be so many finned inhabitants of the vast waters that comprise nearly three-fourths of the surface of the globe.