Percomorphi 265 



of fishes. It appeals as scarcely any other can to our love of 

 beauty, when we look upon it, as shown in Kilbourn's well- 

 known painting, darting like an arrow just shot from the bow, 

 its burnished sides, silver flecked with gold, thrown into bold 

 relief by the cool green background of the rippled sea; the 

 transparent grays, opalescent whites, and glossy blacks of its 

 trembling fins enhance the metallic splendor of its body, until 

 it seems to rival the most brilliant of tropical birds. Kilbourn 

 made copies of his large painting on the pearly linings of sea- 

 shells and produced some wonderful effects by allowing the 

 natural luster of the mother-of-pearl to show through his trans- 

 parent pigments and simulate the brilliancy of the life-inspired 

 hues of the quivering, darting sea-sprite, whose charms even 

 his potent brush could not properly depict. 



"It is a lover of the sun, a fish of tropical nature, which 

 comes to us only in midsummer, and which disappears with 

 the approach of cold, to some region not yet explored by ich- 

 thyologists. It is doubtless very familiar in winter to the 

 inhabitants of some region adjacent to the waters of the Carib- 

 bean or the tropical Atlantic, but until this place shall have 

 been discovered it is more satisfactory to suppose that with 

 the bluefish and the mackerel it inhabits that hypothetical 

 winter resort to which we send the migratory fishes whose 

 habits we do not understand the middle strata of the ocean, 

 the floating beds of Sargassum, which drift hither and thither 

 under the alternate promptings of the Gulf-stream currents 

 and the winter winds." 



The Spanish mackerel swims at the surface in moderate 

 schools and is caught in abundance from Cape May south- 

 ward. Its white flesh is most delicious, when properly grilled, 

 and Spanish mackerel, like pampano, should be cooked in 

 no other way. 



A very similar species, Scomberomorus sierra, occurs on the 

 west coast of Mexico. For some reason it is little valued as 

 food by the Mexicans. In California, the' Monterey Spanish 

 mackerel (Scomberomorus concolor] is equally excellent as a 

 food-fish. This fish lacks the spots characteristic of most 

 of its relatives. It was first found in the Bay of Monterey, 

 especially at Santa Cruz and Soquel, in abundance in the autumn 



