Sometimes A Striped Snake, Bound To
Greener Meadows Across The Stream, Ends Its Undulatory Progress
In The Same Receptacle.
They are so greedy and impetuous that
they are frequently caught by being entangled in the line the
moment it is cast.
Fishermen also distinguish the brook pickerel,
a shorter and thicker fish than the former.
The Horned Pout, _Pimelodus nebulosus_, sometimes called Minister,
from the peculiar squeaking noise it makes when drawn out of the
water, is a dull and blundering fellow, and like the eel
vespertinal in his habits, and fond of the mud. It bites
deliberately as if about its business. They are taken at night
with a mass of worms strung on a thread, which catches in their
teeth, sometimes three or four, with an eel, at one pull. They
are extremely tenacious of life, opening and shutting their
mouths for half an hour after their heads have been cut off. A
bloodthirsty and bullying race of rangers, inhabiting the fertile
river bottoms, with ever a lance in rest, and ready to do battle
with their nearest neighbor. I have observed them in summer, when
every other one had a long and bloody scar upon his back, where
the skin was gone, the mark, perhaps, of some fierce
encounter. Sometimes the fry, not an inch long, are seen
darkening the shore with their myriads.
The Suckers, _Catostomi Bostonienses_ and _tuberculati_, Common and
Horned, perhaps on an average the largest of our fishes, may be
seen in shoals of a hundred or more, stemming the current in the
sun, on their mysterious migrations, and sometimes sucking in the
bait which the fisherman suffers to float toward them.
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