330 SUPPLEMENT ON 



The first genus is that of the well known Mackerel, 

 (Scomber), comprehending the species most extended in all 

 the European coasts, and the one which answers best the 

 purposes of comparison. 



Every body knows that the common mackerel {scomber 

 scombrus, Lin.) is a fish of passage, and the one which, 

 after the herring, contributes, in the seas which bathe the 

 north-west of Europe, to the most abundant and lucrative 

 fisheries. 



Anderson has endeavoured to trace the migrations of the 

 common mackerel. This fish, he tells us, passes the winter 

 in the north. Towards spring, it coasts along Iceland, Scot- 

 land, and Ireland, and enters the Atlantic Ocean, from whence 

 one column passing along Spain and Portugal, enters into the 

 Mediterranean, while another enters the English Channel, ap- 

 pears in May on the coasts of France and England, and passes 

 thence in June to those of Holland and Friezland. This 

 small column having arrived in July on the coasts of Jutland, 

 detaches a division, which, making the tour of that Peninsula, 

 penetrates into the Baltic Sea, and the remainder passing 

 before Norway, return to the extreme north. 



There is much of conjecture, ho wever, in all this, taken, as 

 it should seem, principally from the reports of the Dutch 

 fishennen. 



Other fishermen, cited by Duhamel, report, that the mackerel 

 pass the winter in different bays or roads of Newfoundland, 

 that they bury themselves in the mud, where they remain 

 until the end of May, a period when the ice allows them to 

 spread in great numbers along the coast, and when they are 

 taken in great abundance, but still retain a disagreeable 

 flavour of mud. It is only in July and August that they be- 

 come fat and well flavoured. 



Admiral Pleville-Lepley, an old naval officer in the French 

 serrice, who had sailed for upwards of fifty years, communi- 



