Sturgeon, stur'jun, a family of fishes having elongated funnel-shaped bodies, with five rows of bony keeled shields or scales. The sturgeon is the largest fresh water fish known. The snout is produced formidably in appearance, but harmlessly. The mouth is a sucker like tube on the underside of the head, through which the sturgeon draws small, soft mollusks and plants. There are twenty species. Four are found in North America. The common sturgeon is a frequenter of our Atlantic coast rivers. It resembles the sturgeon of commerce found so abundantly in the Caspian and Black seas. It is from six to ten feet long. Caviar is pickled sturgeon roe. Isinglass is the dried bladder of the sturgeon. Wilmington, Delaware, is the center of the Atlantic sturgeon fishery. A fine, large sturgeon weighs 500 pounds and is worth $75. Caviar is worth a dollar a pound. The Booth Packing Company maintains a large fishery for sturgeons at Lake of the Woods. These sturgeons reach a length of six feet. A Pacific coast sturgeon is one of the largest food fishes. It attains "a length of thirteen feet and a weight of 1,000 pounds." A specimen taken in the Snake River of Idaho measured eleven feet in length and weighed 650 pounds. The so-called shovel-nosed sturgeon of the Mississippi Valley is not a sturgeon. It is without the armor of the sturgeon. Its head is prolonged into a thin, paddle-shaped bone one-third the length of the body. The name paddle-fish has been suggested. See FISH; CASPIAN; CAVIAR; ISINGLASS.