ACANTHOPTERYGII. 331 



cated to M. de Lacepede an observation which would seem to 

 confirm this account. He assured him that in Greenland, in 

 the little hollows which are surrounded by the rocks, which 

 border all those coasts, where the water is always calm, and 

 the bottom generally consisting of soft mud and fucus, he saw 

 at the commencement of spring myriads of mackerel, with 

 their heads sunk some inches in the mud, and their tails ver- 

 tically raised above the level, and that accumulations of fish 

 were so great that at a distance they might be taken for sorts 

 of rocks. He supposed that they had passed the winter in a 

 state of lethargy, under the ice and snow. He added, that in 

 fifteen or twenty days after their awaking, these fish were in 

 some measure struck with blindness, and that numbers of 

 them were then taken with nets, but that when their blind- 

 ness began to be dissipated, the net would serve no longer, 

 and it became necessary to have recourse to the hook. 



We also find something similar to this in Schonevelde. 

 Some sailors informed him that at the end of autumn there 

 grows upon the eye of the scombri a pellicle similar to a nail, 

 which causes them to lose their sight during winter, and 

 which falls or decreases in spring. This circumstance causes 

 them to be taken more speedily in the southern latitudes, and 

 they are never fished for in winter. 



In fact it is not impossible that this adipose skin, which 

 contracts both in front and behind the orbit of the mackerel, 

 may assume greater breadth and thickness during winter, and 

 cover the greater portion of the eye. 



As for the sojourn of the mackerel in the creeks of Green- 

 land, and the sort of lethargy in which they are plunged, we 

 may be the rather permitted to doubt of them, since Otho 

 Fabricius, who resided so long in that country, does not even 

 name the mackerel among the fishes which he saw there. 



It is certain that in the Channel, from the month of April, 

 some small mackerel, and without milts, make their appear- 



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