water, strung on a willow rod, and dried in the sun, the boy sees that a very little fish can make a good deal of a fuss. When the sunfish goes, then the catfish will follow--"a reckless, bullying set of rangers, with ever a lance at rest." The catfish belongs to an ancient type not yet fully made into a fish, and hence those whose paired fins are all properly fastened to the head, as his are not, hold him in well-merited scorn. He has no scales and no bright colors. His fins are small, and his head and mouth are large. Around his mouth are eight long "smellers," fleshy feelers, that he pushes out as he crawls along the bottom in search of anything that he may eat. As he may eat anything, he always finds it. His appetite is as impartial as that of a goat. Anything from a dead lamprey or a bunch of sunfish eggs to a piece of tomato can is grateful to him. In each of the fins which represent his arms is a long, sharp bone with a slimy surface and a serrated edge. These are fastened by a ball-and-socket joint, and whenever the fish is alarmed the bone is whirled over and set in place; then it sticks out stiffly on each side. There is another such bone in the fin on the back, and when all of these are set there is no fish that can swallow him. When he takes the hook, which he surely will do if there is any hook to be taken, he will swallow it greedily. As he is drawn out of the water he sets his three spines, and laughs to himself as the boy pricks his fingers trying to get the hook from his stomach. This the boy is sure to do, and because the boy of the Mississippi Valley is always fishing for catfish is the reason why his fingers are always sore. The catfish is careless of the present, and sure of the future. After he is strung on a birch branch and dried in the sun and sprinkled with dust and has had his stomach dug out to recover the hook, if he falls into the brook he will swim away. He holds no malice, and is ready to bite again at the first thing in sight. The catfish uses his lungs as an organ of hearing. The needless lung becomes a closed sac filled with air, and commonly known as the swim bladder. In the catfish (as in the suckers, chubs, and most brook fishes) the air bladder is large, and is connected by a slender tube, the remains of the trachea, to the oesophagus. At its front it fits closely to the vertebral column. The anterior vertebræ are much enlarged, twisted together, and through them passes a chain of bones which connect with the hidden cavity of the air. The air bladder therefore assists the ear of the catfish as the tympanum and its bones assist the ear of the higher animals. An ear of this sort can carry little range of variety in sound. It probably gives only the impression of jars or disturbances in the water.