the whistle never failed to arouse him, or to call him forth, wherever he might be, and the steamboat was, doubtless, one of the wonders of his life. When a trip up the river, from the international boundary to the settlements on Kootenay lake, was proposed, he was beside himself with joy and anticipation. He became excited beyond all bounds, and when the whistle sounded danced with delight and capered about, not exactly like a gazelle, for he weighed 177 pounds and was heavily built. When he got on board and could examine things at his leisure, he was 'tickled to death.' He inspected everything that was at all accessible, watched the motion of the vessel and the revolutions of the wheel, listened to the noise of the engine and the hissing of the steam, gazed in rapt wonder at a score of different things that from time to time riveted his attention. But his keenest delight, after all, was when he could signal or shout to some of his tribe on the banks or in canoes in the stream. The relish with which he did this was unmistakable. And, on the journey back, he was quite as elated, if not so inquisitive. Certainly that trip on the fire canoe' was one of the events of his life.

The fire canoe' seems to have appeared more natural to the Indians than the locomotive, or 'fire wagon,' possibly because of its progress in the water, like a canoe, and not over the land with the fearful eye of the latter, which so impresses many primitive peoples. In northern Idaho the Indians were very much frightened by the first steam trains. When the railroad was near Rathdrum, several Lower Kootenays, who had been sent into that part of the country to deliver some letters, were so affected by the sight of the puffing, snorting, firespouting locomotive that they threw down their letters on the spot, turned about and fled for dear life, not daring to look back once until they were safe again with their own people. They reported that they had been chased by the Evil One,' himself, and had escaped with the greatest difficulty. Later on, as happens with other peoples, familiarity bred contempt, and the Indians can now look at these creations of the white man's genius with much less of fear than of wonder or of interest. The Kootenay youth is more afraid of doing woman's work' than he is of the fire-wagon.' This was the case with Amelu, the writer's guide, who was with difficulty persuaded to make his own pan-bread on the trail. He was 'hiyu shame' (much ashamed), and used to make it always before an Indian camp was reached. In other things also, he shared the disinclination of his fellow tribesmen to perform any labor that properly belonged to women, according to the customs of his people.

Some writers would deny to the American Indian all possession of romantic love, or of love in any very high sense of the term. This, of course, is an utterly untenable theory, as any one who has seen the Indian at home well knows. The writer's guide, philosopher and

VOL. LXVIII.—33.

friend,' Amelu, a young man of 22 years, was in love all the time he was with him, and gave expression to many of the orthodox symptoms of that state in an undoubted fashion. The shamefaced way in which he would answer when asked why he had been away from the tent (in the neighborhood of an Indian encampment) so long the night before was a convincing fact. One evening he asked for a little money, and no amount of coaxing would for a long time induce him to say what he wanted it for. At last, however, in real lover fashion, he admitted that he wanted to buy some article or other to take to his lady friend, who was to put the finishing touches upon it. On this occasion Amelu blushed as much as the redskin can, and that is a good deal. Altogether, as an eminent Americanist once said, the Indian is a man, even as we are men. This the writer knows by actual experience, from the moment of his first arrival among the Kootenays, when halo naika cumtur (Chinook jargon for 'I don't know') was the only conversation on their part, to the time when he sat with them, round the campfire and himself began the story-telling: Kanáqe Skinkuts, The Coyote was going along.'

THE FRESH-WATER FISHES OF SOUTH AND MIDDLE

AMERICA

BY PROFESSOR CARL H. EIGENMANN

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

A. The salient features of the fish fauna of the Americas south of the United States are:

1. Great variety of fish life in the area between the Caribbean Sea and the Argentine Republic.

2. Paucity of 'types' or families contributing to this variety.

3. Paucity of the middle American fauna and its essentially South American character except for

4. the isolation of the fauna of the Mexican plateau.

5. Paucity of the Pacific slope fauna and its essentially Atlantic slope character.

6. The marine' character of the Titicacan fauna.

7. The paucity of the Patagonian fauna and its essential difference from the Brazilian fauna.

8. The similarity of the tropical American to the tropical African fauna.

The first fresh-water fishes of South America were described by Marcgrav in 1648. Additional accounts were given by Gronow, 1754 to 1756; Scopoli, 1777; Bloch, 1794; Lacépède, 1802; Bloch and Schneider, 1807; Cuvier, 1817 to 1818.

In 1817 the king of Bavaria sent Spix and Martius on an extended trip to Brazil. Spix was working at the report on the fishes when he died. The collection was turned over by Martius to Louis Agassiz, a student of twenty-one at Munich. It had been nip and tuck between. Agassiz's desire to study natural history and his father's desire to have his son study medicine. The commission to work up the Brazilian fishes was surreptitiously undertaken by Agassiz and the results published in a superb folio volume. This work, which tinetured the entire later life of Louis Agassiz, was by far the most important contribution. to the fresh-water fishes of South America that had appeared. Agassiz's desire to visit Brazil himself was not fulfilled until forty years later, when, as the head of the Thayer expedition, he spent sixteen months in Brazil with twelve assistants, devoting his time mainly to fresh-water fishes.

I was a student under Jordan when Mrs. Agassiz's 'Life and Letters of Louis Agassiz' appeared in 1885. Agassiz's account of his expedition to South America, coupled with the statement of Jordan that no

FIL SLANDE DO SUL

12

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SOUTH AMERICA-the hypothetical line of demarcation between the Patagonian and Tropical American fauna marked ---. Centers of distribution in unbroken circles, and hypothetical lines of migration by arrows.

comprehensive account of his collections had ever been prepared, created the desire to examine this lavishly rich fauna. In the fall of 1887, with Mrs. R. S. Eigenmann, I began work on Agassiz's unrivaled collections, to which I had gained access through the courtesy of Mr. Alexander Agassiz, the director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and Mr. S. Garman, the curator of fishes. Financial and other reasons

compelled me to abandon the work when but half finished. Occasional collections received from South America for identification have, however, kept up my interest. The entire problem presented by this fauna. has been reviewed and will be published in one of the reports of the Hatcher expedition to Patagonia. I am permitted to publish this summary of results through the courtesy of the editor of the Hatcher volumes, Professor W. B. Scott, of Princeton University.

1. Variety of Fish Life.

On February 23, 1866, Louis Agassiz wrote to the emperor of Brazil: I estimate the total number of species which I actually possess [from the Amazon] at eighteen hundred, and it may be two thousand.

To this is added a footnote in Agassiz's 'A Journey in Brazil,' p. 383. To-day I can not give a more precise account of the final results of my survey. Though all my collections are safely stored in the museum, every practical zoologist understands that a critical examination of more than eighty thousand specimens can not be made in less than several years.

Agassiz secured more species from a small lake in the valley of the Amazon than there are in all the fresh waters of Europe.

The number of species he collected was overestimated by Agassiz. While about half of his Amazonian collections have not, after forty years, been examined, it is certain that the species not yet examined will not swell his list to 1,800 species. The total number of species recorded from the Amazon basin up to date is 674.

Although Agassiz's estimate of the number of species he collected is too high, the total number of species found in South America is very great. About ten per cent. of all the known species of fishes have been recorded from the freshwaters of South America. In 1892 I estimated that three fourths of the fauna was known. Now, after examining recent lists, and considering that collections have largely been made in easily accessible and great highways, and that from great river basins like the Purus, Tapajos, Xingu and the Uruguay and the greater part of the Madeira and the Tocantins we have nothing at all, and that even from the great Orinoco and Magdalena we know next to nothing; I doubt very much if we even yet know so much as three fourths of the fauna of the area between the Caribbean Sea and the Argentine Republic.

The tropical American fresh-water fauna, having its center of greatest diversity in the middle Amazon basin, is attenuated northward. till it reaches the vanishing point just on the borders of the United States. Southward it extends to somewhere no one knows wheresouth of Buenos Aires. The Patagonian fauna and North American fauna are entirely different from the tropical American fauna and from each other.

The key to the great diversity of the tropical American fauna is to be found in the enormous single water system, extending from 10°