DRUM, the name given to certain fishes belonging to the family Sciaenidae, so called because they make a peculiar grunting noise. The sea drum (Pogonias cromis), found along the Atlantic coasts of North and South America, attains a length of four feet. The body, which is oblong, with an elevated back, has large scales except on the breast. The throat is paved with stony teeth adapted for crush ing shell-fish. In colour the sea drum is brownish-grey or brownish-red, the young being marked with broad, vertical bands of a darker shade. It is not valued for food and, as it destroys great quantities of oysters, is much disliked by oystermen. The very similar freshwater drum (Aplodinotus grunniens), called also sheep-head and thunder pumper, is a greyish, silvery fish some times attaining 31 ft. in length and 5o lb. in weight. It occurs from Georgia and Texas to the Great Lakes but is especially abundant in the streams and lakes of the Mississippi valley. Its scales are thin and deep, with the larger ones on the breast. The freshwater drum is a popular food fish in the South but is little used in the North.
In architecture, a drum is a vertical wall, usually cylindrical, supporting a dome, commonly limited to walls carried at a con siderable height by pendentives, or similar forms. The drum first appears in a developed form in Byzantine architecture (see BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE). It later became a characteristic feature of almost all Renaissance dome design (see DOME).