The Game Fish, of the Northern States and British Provinces / With an account of the salmon and sea-trout fishing of Canada and New Brunswick, together with simple directions for tying artificial flies, etc., etc.

by Robert Barnwell Roosevelt

I have always considered a preface or introduction a species of apology, and not intending that the following sketches shall need any apology, I shall write no introduction; but an explanation of the scientific distinctions and divisions of fishes may not only be appropriate but highly instructive, if my readers be as ignorant as I think them.

It has been a matter of serious reproach by the naturalists against the sportsmen, that the latter, instead of adopting a uniform nomenclature, call a bird or fish in one section of our country by a different name from that under which it is known in another; that a Quail and Black Bass at the North become a Partridge and Trout at the South. The sportsmen, conscious of the justness of the reproach, have submitted quietly to the learned stones of reproof hurled at them, and scarcely dared to suggest that their persecutors lived in the most fragile of glass houses; that naturalists were liable to the same accusation, and that there is hardly a fish, bird or beast that they have not called by several different names. Are not the contentions of Ortyx and Perdrix known to all? Is it quite certain, when we catch an Otsego Bass, whether we catch a Coregonus Otsego or a Coregonus Albus, or even a Salmo Otsego? Is it perfectly ascertained from a scientific point of view that we catch anything? Who does not know that a Tautog is a Blackfish, or would be materially instructed by hearing him called a Tautoga Americana? Scientific men vie with one another in creating new names, the most useless things in Christendom; while sportsmen are happy to take them, the game, as they find them. The first are guilty of faults of commission, the latter of omission. The language of each is Greek to the other.

The writer of these sketches, knowing just sufficient Greek to be a sportsman, and yet able to translate with the help of a dictionary, offers, from the want of one more worthy, to conciliate all differences. His plan is to translate all terms that are translatable, and to omit altogether those that are not, trusting that they will never be missed. His intention at first was to write a noble work on natural history that would carry his name in letters of gold, as a public reformer and benefactor, to latest posterity; but finding, on reviewing his stores of information, that he knew but little on the subject, he was compelled to relinquish the idea. Being therefore nothing but a gentle angler, instead of instructing the universe, he is content to amuse a small circle of lovers of sporting anecdotes, and, provided he receives it, will be content with their approval. As, however, one fool can always teach another something, the writer feels impelled to mingle a little instruction in doses to suit the weakest stomach, that those who have not skipped this chapter on account of its title, may at least receive something for their perseverance. They need not suppose for a moment that the writer pretends to insist upon what he shall write as infallible, but where his readers differ from him, is perfectly willing to admit that he is entirely mistaken; the buyer of a book is always right, the author a toujours tort.

He supposes—let there be no misunderstandings when he accidentally uses a stronger word—that fishes are divided into two great orders, and are distinguished as having bony or cartilaginous skeletons; thus a quawl, provided he be a fish at all, would be a very cartilaginous one, and a catfish with his back fin erected, as the writer has often learned to his cost, is a bony fish.

As the cartilaginous fish are of small account, the reader may forget all about them if he wishes, but he is requested to remember the useful division of those having bony skeletons into the great classes, easily distinguished, of the soft finned and spiny finned, called in foreign languages by the horrible terms malacopterygii and acanthopterygii—terms unpronounceable except by a Dutchman or a philosopher. These classes are distinguished, as the English words imply, by their having the rays of their fins soft and flexible or hard and spine-like. The investigator may determine their peculiarities by pressing strongly upon the points of the fin rays; if nature intimates that his organism is suffering, the fish is a acanthop, etc.; if not, why not.

The location of the fins of the fish mark the subdivisions of the families. The above diagram being supposed to represent a fish, and a Trout at that, G is the first back or dorsal fin, F the second—in the case of this species, mere rayless, fatty matter; E is the tail fin or caudal—the writer, as a married man, naturally avoiding the latter term on account of its suggestiveness; D is the anal fin, for which the writer can offer no English substitute; C are the two ventrals or belly fins; B is the pectoral or shoulder fin, having a complemental one on the other side of the fish; and A represents what in learned language are called branchiostegous rays, a name that, being translated, means merely gill-rays. What is not in a name! H is the lateral line. Then bearing in mind the great divisions of soft and hard finned, the subdivisions are distinguished by the fish having the ventrals behind the pectorals and on the abdomen, giving them the name of abdominal fish, or before the pectorals, giving rise to the name jugular or throat finned, and below the pectorals, giving the name thoracic or shoulder-finned fish. Philosophers pay little attention to the dorsal and anal fins, and fish, without losing their identity, can have as many as they please. In caudals, unlike human Caudles, they are restricted to one. There are other fish, such as eels, denominated apodal or footless, because the lower fins or feet are wholly wanting.

After having examined the texture, number and location of the fins, and counted the number of the rays in each, the naturalist next turns his attention to the hard bony portion of the head, which covers the gills, and opens and shuts as the fish breathes, and which, with the excellent common sense for which naturalists are notorious, he calls the operculum. It is divided into the operculum, or gill-cover proper, No. 1; the pre-operculum, or fore gill-cover, No. 2; the inter-operculum, or middle gill-cover, No. 3; and the sub-operculum, or under gill-cover, No. 4. The head, in the foregoing diagram, is intended to represent the head of a trout, weighing a pound and a half, caught at Phillipse’s Pond, near Smith Town, Long Island. The gill-rays are shown at No. 5. The divisions of the gill-cover are faintly marked in the real fish, and require some study.

Lastly, the naturalist examines a fish as a jockey does a horse, by looking at his teeth, and with about equally satisfactory results. They both are bitten, whether the term be used in a literal or metaphorical sense. The writer once, after catching a large fish, having heard that trout had teeth in their throats, proceeded to investigate. Moved thereto by the spirit of inquiry, he thrust one finger as far as possible down the trout’s mouth, and was not a little surprised, as well as pained, to find that the throat was lined with teeth sharper than a serpent’s, and arranged in the same manner. They inclined backward, and once having penetrated a substance, would not and could not let go. The writer having suffered the agony that the pursuit of science sometimes involves, after exhausting gentle means of escape, and knowing that he could no more wear a trout, than the old man in the “Decameron” could the protecting ring, with a wrench tore away his hand, a bleeding sacrifice to science. Any reader wishing to ascertain the same facts, may pursue a similar course.

On the foregoing diagram, which represents the arrangement of teeth in the salmon tribe, No. 6 is the upper jaw, and No. 7 the lower; No. 8, the outer teeth in the upper jaw, superior maxillary; No. 9, the same in the lower jaw, inferior maxillary; No. 10, the inner row of teeth of the upper jaw called learnedly the palatine; No 11, the teeth on the tongue, and No. 12 those on the roof of the mouth, or vomerine. The trout the writer has examined had no visible teeth on the roof of the mouth; they had either suffered from toothache in early life, and applying to a piscatorial dentist, had them drawn, or the teeth had slipped down and settled round their throats as the writer has already mentioned.