A New Fish Discovered

1896

Scientists are startled when they find a new fish weighing twenty pounds. On September 18, 1896, while fishing on the banks some twenty-eight miles southwest of Cape Flattery, in the schooner Wenoma, Captain Jacobson caught a strange and uncommonly beautiful fish in eighty-five fathoms of water. The fish is twenty-six aid a half inches long, seventeen inches deep and about four inches thick. It weighs twenty pounds, and in high coloring surpasses nearly every other fish of the ocean. The top of the head is a brick red, the back is a metallic blue, shading to an aluminum color on the under side. The mesial line is strongly arched and marked by a series of large scales. The whole fish is covered with pure white round spots. The fins are strongly spined and extend nearly the whole length of the fish. The long spine of the dorsal is ten inches in length. The tail is lunate. The color of the fins is bright vermilion, edged with sulphur yellow. The month is small and toothless, the lower lip protruding and of a vermilion color. The eyes are large and round.

None of the books on fishes in the libraries of the University of Washington or the Young Naturalists' Society give any description of this new visitor of the finny tribes. — Seattle (Wash.) Post-Intelligencer.


Indiana, 1896

Found a Pearl in the Creek

B. T. Howland, a farmer living near Evansville, Ind. found a pearl a few days ago in the creek below the mill at Afton. He sold the gem to a man living at Brodhead for $350. The buyer had the gem appraised by experts and now values it at $1500. No suggestion as to how the pearl might have got in the mill stream is offered. — Buffalo Express.