Cyprinidae

“ I shall here give the names and a few particulars of the history of the fishes that are most suitable for the aquarium, reserving my notes on the grouping and general stocking for a subsequent chapter. It is to the interesting family of Cyprinidæ we are to look for our chief supplies. This tribe of fishes belongs to the great division of Malacopterygii, or those having their fin-membranes supported by flexible rays, which are either pointed or branched, or both. ”

“ Fishes like the Flat Fishes or Pleuronectidae, when not in motion by the exercise of their fins, habitually rest on the sea-bottom, and, as an air-bladder is useless under such conditions, it has, in consequence, undergone complete atrophy. Not a few Siluridae, and some Cyprinidae, inhabit the comparatively shallow waters of rapidly flowing mountain torrents, and are often provided with suckers for attachment to stones or rocks. ”

“ In the fresh-waters of the tropics there are no brilliantly-coloured corals or other organisms for the fishes to resemble; yet many species in the Amazons are beautifully coloured, and many of the carnivorous Cyprinidæ in India are ornamented with "bright longitudinal lines of various tints." ”

“ This list could be much increased from the families of Siluridæ and Cyprinidæ, but as these have a greater range than the other Freshwater fishes, they do not illustrate with equal force the object for which the list has been composed.
The ways in which the dispersal of Freshwater fishes has been effected were various; they are probably all still in operation, but most work so slowly and imperceptibly as to escape direct observation; perhaps, they will be more conspicuous, after science and scientific inquiry shall have reached to a somewhat greater age. ”

“ The heat of a summer or early autumn day makes them sluggish, but an hour or two in the evening is sometimes remunerative. The bait for them all should usually lie on the bottom, and it consists mainly of worms, wasp and other grubs, pastes of various kinds; and for carp, and sometimes bream, of vegetable baits such as small boiled potatoes, beans, peas, stewed wheat, pieces of banana, &c. None of these fish feed well in winter.
Roach, Rudd, Dace, Chub.—The next group of Cyprinidae consists of fish which will take a bait similar to those already mentioned and also a fly. ”

“ The CHUB Is, according to the Artedian and Linnæan system, a species of Cyprinus, and is called by the French the Vilian and Testard, and was called by the ancient Romans Squalus. The resorts of this fish are easily found; being generally holes over-shaded by trees; and on a hot day, they may be seen in great numbers, floating almost on the surface of the water. For the table they are very poor fish, full of bones. They afford much entertainment to the angler, and are easily caught. ”

“ Gold and silver fishes, though originally natives of China and Japan, yet are become so well reconciled to our climate as to thrive and multiply very fast in our ponds and stews. Linnaeus ranks this species of fish under the genus of cyprinus, or carp, and calls it cyprinus auratus. ”

“ The Cyprinids constitute the majority of the freshwater fishes in Europe, Asia, and North America; they are comparatively few (about 100 species) in Africa, where they coexist with the Characinids. Some, like the Carp (Cyprinus carpio) and the Tench (Tinca vulgaris) , are sluggish, except during the breeding season, when they show great excitement and indulge in leaps out of the water; others, like the Bleak (Alburnus lucidus) are constantly on the move in large shoals near the surface ”

“ CYPRINODONTS. In spite of their name, the small fishes called Cyprinodonts are in no way related to the Cyprinids, or carp family, but are near allies of the pike, characterized by a flat head with protractile mouth beset with cardiform, villiform, or compressed, bi- or tri-cuspid teeth, generally large scales, and the absence of a well-developed lateral line. About two hundred species are known, mostly inhabitants of the fresh and brackish waters of America; only about thirty are known from the old world (south Europe, south Asia, China and Japan, and Africa) . ”

“ Also secondary sexual differences are developed in the Cyprinodonts; the males are always the smaller, sometimes several times smaller than the females, quite diminutive; and they are perhaps the smallest fishes in existence. The fins generally are more developed in the males, and the coloration is frequently different also. Some species are carnivorous; others live on the organic substances mixed with mud. Fossil remains have been found in tertiary strata, all apparently referable to the existing genus Cyprinodon ”

“ More especially the Freshwater fishes, with which we are here solely concerned, have been spread in circumpolar zones, and in a but limited degree from north to south. No family, much less a genus, ranges from the north to the south, whilst a number of families and genera make the entire circuit, and some species more than half of the circuit round the globe within the zone to which they belong. Not even the Cyprinoids and Siluroids, which are most characteristic of the freshwater fauna of our period, are an exception to this. ”

“ Out of the cloudy, nocturnal, or wintry ocean, comes forth the sun, the pearl lost in the sea, which the gold or silver fish brings out.
The little goldfish of our aquariums, the cyprinus chrysoparius, the cyprinus auratus, the cyprinus sophore (the Hindoo çapharas, in the feminine çapharî) , and the luminous pike, like the moon, can expand and contract. ”

“ Certain groups, like the Cyprinodontinæ, are distributed only along the shallow shore waters; others, like the sharks and bluefish, are pelagic, living on the high seas, and such usually have a wide distribution. The ocean depths have their peculiar fish fauna—species modified for these peculiar conditions, and unable to subsist at the surface. These species, living in darkness, often have no eyes, and many are phosphorescent. The coldest latitudes harbor their fishes. ”

“ North America will, without doubt, in the end show as many distinct races as Europe and Asia.
Cyprinoids, belonging to genera living as well as extinct, existed in North America in the tertiary period. At present, Cyprinina, Leuciscina, and Abramidina are well represented, but there is no representative of the Old World genus Barbus, or of the Cobitidina [26] ; Rhodeina are also absent. On the other hand, a well-marked Cyprinoid type is developed—the Catostomina, of which one species has, as it were, returned into Asia. ”

“ The pond and river fish begin to reproduce usually when five months old. They all produce their ova at the beginning of summer. Like the marine fish, the females of these kinds never emit all their ova, nor the males all their semen, at once; but both sexes are always found to contain a portion of the reproductive substance; they produce their ova at the proper season. The cyprinus five or six times a-year, and especially under the influence of the stars. ”

“ Sometimes as we sat at our dinner near the landing-place we watched a strange species of fish (genus Chironectes, Cuvier) . These little animals are provided with arms, at least with members shaped like such as far as the elbow, but the lower part resembles a fin; they are amphibious, living equally well on the mud or in the water; in moving in the mud they walk, as it were, on their elbows, and the lower arm or fin then projects like a great splay foot; but in swimming the whole of this apparatus is used as a fin. ”

“ The most curious of the Cyprinodontids is the genus Anableps, of Central and South America, surface-swimming Fishes, the strongly projecting eyes of which are divided by a horizontal band of the conjunctiva into an upper part adapted for vision in the air, and a lower for vision in the water, and the pupil is divided into two parts by a constriction; the larger species grows to the length of a foot. ”

“ THE PISCES, Or Fishes, are defined by Cuvier to be vertebrated animals with red blood, breathing through the medium of water by means of their branchiæ or gills. To this definition may be added, that fishes have no neck, and that the body generally tapers from the head to the tail; that most of the species are furnished with air-bladders which enable them to swim; and that their bodies are generally covered with scales. The heart has only one auricle, and the blood is cold. The gills require to be kept moist to enable the fish to breathe, and as soon as they become dry, the fish dies. ”

“ There are also migratory fish in fresh water, like the white fish, the salmon, trout, and the siscowet, which live in the abyssal depths of the great lakes and swim up into the shallows and creeks in winter to spawn their eggs, and the brook trout and dace, which for a similar purpose ascend from the pools and quiet meadow stretches to the pebble-paved ripplets near the spring sources of the brooks in which they live.
Having, in a general way, classified fish according to their habits, we are in a position to consider the manner in which man has succeeded in exterminating them. ”

“ Cyprides are so exceedingly numerous in some of the bands, that they impart to the stone an Oölitic appearance; while others of a dark-colored limestone we see strewed over, like the oozy bottom of a modern lake, with specimens of what seem Paludina, Cyclas, and Planorbus. Some of the other shells are more equivocal: a Mytilus or Modiola, which abounds in some of the bands, may have been either a sea or a fresh-water shell; and a small oyster and Astarte seem decidedly marine. Remains of fish are very abundant,—scales, plates, teeth, ichthyodorulites, and in some instances entire ichthyolites. ”

“ The carp itself, Cyprinus carpio, has a very wide distribution, having spread, through the agency of man, over nearly the whole of Europe and a part of North America, where it lives in lakes, ponds, canals, and slow-running rivers with plenty of vegetation. ”

“ Every fisherman worth his salt knows how well all fish that swim in the sea love the sapid flesh of the cephalopoda, making it the finest bait known, and in truth it is, and always has been, a succulent dainty, where known, for mankind as well. But it is evident from the scanty number of times that the gigantic cuttle-fish has been reported, that his habitat is well beneath the surface, yet not so far down but that he may be easily reached by the whale, and also find food for his own vast bulk. Probably they prey upon one another. ”

“ On the whole the fish-fauna is typically Neotropical, but with a small infusion of Nearctic forms. There are a considerable proportion of peculiar genera, and almost all the species are distinct from those of other countries. The predominant family is that of the Cyprinodontidæ, represented by 12 genera ”

“ Gold-fish (Cyprinus auratus) were introduced into Europe only two or three centuries ago; but it is believed that they have been kept in confinement from an ancient period in China. Mr. Blyth [49] suspects from the analogous variation of other fishes that golden-coloured fish do not occur in a state of nature. These fishes frequently live under the most unnatural conditions, and their variability in colour, size, and in some important points of structure is very great. ”

“ Nat, look to your gaff—hook him close to the tail. Keep it up, my dear fellow!—there now, we have him. More are on, and we proceed. When we have reached the end many goodly fishes are lying in the bottom of our skiff. New bait has been put on, and, as we return, I congratulate myself and my companions on the success of our efforts; for there lies fish enough for ourselves and our neighbors.
A trot-line at this period was perfectly safe at Henderson, should I have allowed it to remain for weeks at a time. ”

“ There are but few natural orders of fishes—and they divide themselves for the purposes of our enquiry chiefly into the Acanthopterygii, or those that possess bony skeletons, with prickly, spinous processes on the dorsal fins, such as the perch, the mullet, and the gurnard; the Malacopterygii, or soft-finned fishes, including the carp, the salmon, &c.; and the Chondropterygii, with cartilaginous spines and bones, embracing such fish as the sturgeon, shark, and skate. ”

“ The minute style of dentition in these smaller fishes has been thought to indicate their habit of keeping to the bottom of the water and feeding on the soft decaying substances lying there. Nowhere have I seen the small rhomboidal scales of the palæoniscus so abundant as among dark shales charged with cypris cases and fragments of terrestrial plants, and on such occasions the idea has often occurred that these graceful little fishes, like the amia of the American rivers, may have fed on the cyprides that swarmed along the bottom of the estuary. ”

“ The flight of one of the largest flying fishes (Cypsilurus californicus) has been carefully studied by Dr. Charles H. Gilbert and the writer. The movements of the fish in the water are extremely rapid. The sole motive power is the action under the water of the strong tail. No force can be acquired while the fish is in the air. On rising from the water the movements [Pg 158] of the tail are continued until the whole body is out of the water. When the tail is in motion the pectorals seem in a state of rapid vibration. ”

“ These two great Divisions formed the basis of the classification of the eminent naturalist, Cuvier, and may serve roughly to differentiate the various classes of fish which are now more scientifically grouped according to their particular characteristics into six divisions, or four orders, if the classification of Agassiz, based on the structure of their scales, be followed. The true internal skeleton differs very widely among fish; in the case of one fish, the lancelet, a true skeleton scarcely exists, the backbone being replaced by a soft cellular rod. ”