The Speed of Fishes.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 473, 21 May 1890, Page 5

The Speed of Fishes.

The speed of fishes is almost an unknown quantity, it being, as Professor G. Brown Goode says, very difficult to measure. If, says the professor, you could get a fish and put it in a trough of water 1,000 feet long, and start it at one end and make it swim to the other without stopping, the information could be easily obtained ; but fish are unintelligent, and will not do this. Estimates of the speed of fish are consequently only approximate, and more or less founded upon guessing, One can tell, however, at a glance whether a fish is built for speed or not. A fast fish looks trim and pointed like a yacht. Its head is conical in shape, and its fins fib close down to its body like a knife blade into its handle. Fish with large heads, bigger than their bodies, and with short stubby fins, are built for slow motion. The most predatory fishes are the fastest swimmers. The good fishes are, as a general thing, the slowest, and consequently are easily captured. Their loss is : recompensed, however, by the natural law which makes them very prolific in reproduction. Dolphins have been known to swim around an ocean steamer, and it is quite safe to say their speed is twenty mileß an hour; but it may be twice as much. The Spanish mackerel is one of the fastest of food fishes. Its body is cone-shaped, and is as smooth as burnished metal. Its speed is as matchless as that of the dolphin, and, in motion, it cuts the water like » yacht, btA