Identifier: naturalistinvanc01lor (find matches)
Title: The naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia
Year: 1866 (1860s)
Authors: Lord, John Keast, 1818-1872
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: London, R. Bentley
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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arous Fish We are so accustomed to associate the production of young fishes witheggs and milt, familiar to all as hard and soft roein the cured herring, that it is difficult to believein the existence of a fish bringing forth liveyoung, just as do dogs, cats, rats, and mice—onlywith this difference, that, in the case of the fish,the young are perfect in every detail, whenlaunched into the water, as the parent, and swimaway self-dependent, to feed or be fed on, asgood or ill-luck befals the little wanderer. Thewoodcut represents the female fish with theyoung in situ, together with others scatteredround her, having fallen out when the walls ofthe abdomen were dissected open: the drawingwas made from a female fish I brought fromVancouver Island, and now exhibiting in theFish Room of the British Museum. At San Francisco, as early as April, I saw largenumbers of viviparous fish in the market forsale; but then, it is an open question whetherthese fish really arrive at an earlier period of
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VIVIPAROUS FISH. 107 the year in the Bay of San Francisco than atVancouver Island. I think not. That they aretaken earlier in the year is simply due to thefact, that the fishermen at San Francisco havebetter nets and fish in deeper water, than theIndians, and consequently take the fish earlier.The habit of the fish is clearly to come intoshallow water when the period anives for pro-ducing its live young; and from the fact thatsome of these fish are occasionally taken at allperiods of the year, I am induced to believe thatthey do not in reahty migrate, but only retireinto deeper water along the coast, there toremain during the winter months, reappearingin the shallow bays and estuaries in June andJuly, or perhaps earlier, for reproductive pur-poses; here they remain until September, andthen entirely disappear. They swim close to the surface in immenseshoals, and numbers are very craftily taken bythe Indians, who literally frighten the fish intotheir canoes. At low-tide, when a shoal of

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