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0 Z2 392 Robert Rush Miller for the aborigines that lived along the lower Colorado and Gila rivers (Miller, 1955). It probably approached a maximum length of 6 feet and a weight of nearly 100 pounds, although record weights over the past 35 years are not known to have exceeded 40-50 pounds. At one time this predatory, pikelike fish was common in the river chan- nels throughout the Colorado River basin, wherever there was suf- ficient depth and current. Until about 1911, the species was so abun- dant in the lower Colorado that individuals got into the irrigation ditches and were pitchforked out onto the banks by the hundreds for use as fertilizer. Vast numbers of "salmon," bonytails, and hump- back suckers perished in this fashion or died when they were unable to re-enter the river from the irrigated lands (testimony of Walter K. Bowker, Jr., Imperial Valley Irrigation District, March 23, 1950) . In the early days the Indians used to tie 2 sticks together, with netting between, and dip "salmon" out of-the river. From 1911 to 1920, "salmon" were numerous in the Gila River near Dome, according to R. C. Richardson, Bureau of Reclamation employee and long-time fisherman. Earlier, between about 1845 and 1885, the species occurred more widely in the Gila River basin in Arizona (Miller, 1955), and it may still persist in the deep canyons of Salt River where 2 young were caught by R. R. Miller and party on May 18, 1950 (at mouth of Cibecue Creek, Gila County; UMMZ 162779). A sharp decline in abundance was noticed in the lower Colorado in the 1930-35 period, during the construction and completion of Hoover Dam and the great 1934 drought, at the height of which the river was reduced to a shallow trickle at Yuma (Dill, 1944). Specimens of Ptychocheilus weighing 6 to 34 pounds (Wallis, 1951, p. 90) were caught along the lower Colorado in the 1930's and 1940's but records of the species after 1949 are scarce. In the Gila River basin the last adult was caught in 1937 (in Salt River, above Roosevelt Dam), according to T. T. Frazier, informed local resident, who reported that the species had been fairly common there in 1906. Changing ecological conditions, competition, and direct predation have no doubt strongly influenced the depletion of the Colorado squawfish and bonytail, so that both species are now nearly ex- tirpated from the lower river. The humpback sucker, however, ap- pears to be holding its own in the man-made reservoirs. Extensive recent sampling in the lower Colorado by the California Department of Fish and Game, in connection with an evaluation of the introduced a j