The Ohio ‘toter’ is two or three inches in length; its name is derived from the barbarism ‘tote,’ meaning to ‘carry,’ because this fish makes itself a cell by surrounding a place with pebbles. Pike, pickerel, and jack-fish, weighing from six ounces to twenty pounds, are found in the western rivers. Of the gar-fish there are also numerous varieties. The alligator-gar is sometimes eight feet long, and is voracious, fierce and formidable, even to the human species. Its dart in rapidity equals the flight of a bird. Its mouth is long, round, and pointed, thickset with sharp teeth; its body is covered with scales so hard as to be impenetrable by a rifle-bullet, and, when dry, answer the purposes of a flint in striking fire from steel. Its weight is from fifty to two hundred pounds, and its appearance is hideous. It is, in fact, the shark of rivers, and is considered far more formidable than the alligator himself. The devil-jack-diamond fish is another monster of the rivers. One has been caught that weighed four hundred pounds; its usual length is from four to ten feet. Eels vary in length from two to four feet. The best species for the table is the yellow eel. Of sturgeon there are six species in these rivers, some of them four feet in length; some of them are said to form a palatable food. The Mississippi saw-fish varies in length from three feet to six; it has twenty-six long teeth on either side, in the form of a saw. There is also a spotted horn-fish from two to three feet long, the horn being one quarter the length of the body. The beautifully striped bar-fish go in shoals in the southern streams; they weigh from one to three pounds, and are taken with a hook. The shovel-fish is found in the muddy lakes of the middle region of the valley; it weighs from ten to fifty pounds, is without scales, and has in front of the mouth a bony substance between six and twelve inches long, and two or three inches wide, with which it turns up the mud in search of its food. It is exceedingly fat, and is taken for its oil. ‘We have never remarked this fish in any museum,’ says Mr. Flint, ‘although to us the most strange and whimsical-looking fish we have seen. We have seen one instance of a horribly deformed animal, apparently intermediate between the class _testudo_ and fishes. We saw it in a water of the Washita, and had not a fair opportunity to examine it. It is called toad-fish, has a shell like a tortoise, but in every thing else resembles a fish. It is said to be sufficiently strong to bear a man on its back; and, from the account of those who have examined it, this animal must be a _lusus naturæ_.’