Cavailas and Pampanos 283 



distinguishing characteristic is a broad, dark collar over the 

 neck, from which two black stripes or straps, parting on the 

 shoulders, extend, one on each side, to the tail. He looks as 

 if harnessed with a pair of traces, and his behavior on a fly-rod 

 is that of a wild horse. The first one that I struck, in the 

 brackish water of Hillsborough River at Tampa, gave me a 

 hitherto unknown sensation. The tremendous rush was not 

 unfamiliar, but when the fierce fellow took the top of the water 

 and went along lashing it with his tail, swift as a bullet, then 

 descended, and with a short, sharp, electric shock left the line 

 to come home free, I was for an instant confounded. It was 

 all over in ten seconds. Nearly every fish that I struck after 

 this behaved in the same way, and after I had got 'the hang 

 of them ' I took a great many. 5 ' 



The Butter-fishes: Stromateidae. The butter-fishes (Stroma- 

 teida] form a large group of small fishes with short, compressed 

 bodies, smooth scales, feeble spines, the vertebrae in increased 

 number and especially characterized by the presence of a series 

 of tooth-like processes in the oesophagus behind the pharyn- 

 geals. The ventral fins present in the young are often lost in 

 the process of development. 



According to Mr. Regan, the pelvic bones are very loosely 

 attached to the shoulder-girdle as in the extinct genera Platy- 

 cormus and Homosoma. This is perhaps a primitive feature, 

 indicating the line of descent of these fishes from berycoid 

 forms. 



We unite with the Stromateida the groups or families of 

 Centrolophidcs and Nomeidce, knowing no characters by which 

 to separate them. 



Stromateus fiatola, the fiatola of the Italian fishermen, is an 

 excellent food-fish of the Mediterranean. Poronotus triacan. 

 thus, the harvest-fish, or dollar-fish, of our Atlantic coast, is a 

 common little silvery fish six to ten inches, as bright and almost 

 as round as a dollar. Its tender oily flesh has an excellent 

 flavor. Very similar to it is the poppy-fish (Palometa simillima) 

 of the sandy shores of California, miscalled the "California 

 pampano," valued by the San Francisco epicure, who pays 

 large prices for it supposing it to be pampano, although admit- 

 ting that the pampano in New Orleans has firmer flesh and 



