Catfish

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

a family of marine and freshwater fishes including 900 species. As a family they are sluggish, feeding generally in the mud of streams. Some of them are good for food, and all are tenacious of life, living out of water or in the mud of dried up ponds for an astonishing length of time. The body is without scales. The mouth is usually surrounded by feelers. The first ray of the forward fins is extended into a sharp spine which inflicts painful wounds. Of North American species, we have two sea catfishes of a dusky bluish color along seashores from New York to Texas. The three-foot channel-fish, olivaceous in color, with silvery sides and a large eye, is an excellent food fish. It is found in streams from Vermont to Montana and southward to the Gulf. The steely blue Mississippi cat is larger and stouter than the preceding, reaching a weight of 100 pounds. The best known catfish is the common bullhead or horned pout, found in muddy bottoms of ponds and streams everywhere. It can make a living after all other fish, even the pickerel, have been destroyed. It is a nuisance to the angler for perch, wall-eye, or bass. Thoreau has noted its ways well. The horned-pout is a dull and blundering fellow, 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.--A Week.