THE SPANISH MACKEREL AXD THE CEROES. 189 



In Genio C. Scott's "Fishing in American Waters" is an interesting 

 little picture of a school of Spanish Mackerel feeding, which is worthy of 

 examination. 



Both Earll and Stearns agree in the statement that this is a fish which 

 lives almost entirely at the surface. On a calm bright day in summer, the 

 surface of the Chesapeake or the Gulf of Mexico is sometimes broken up 

 for miles by the movements of large schools of these fishes, while the air 

 is enlivened by the screaming flocks of terns, which follow them, to gather 

 up the fragments of their feasts. Similar scenes may occasionally be wit- 

 nessed off the coast of New Jersey and the Carolinas, but further to the 

 southward their abundance is less. 



The schools are frequently observed at a long distance from the shore, 

 especially when they are first approaching in the spring. Mr. Earll has 

 also called attention to the fact that they avoid brackish waters, and thus 

 accounts for their abundance on the eastern side of the Chesapeake, and 

 their comparative absence near the opposite shores where the salinity of 

 the waters is lessened by the inflow of the Potomac, Rappahannock, the 

 York and the James. During the spawning season they frequent the 

 warmest and shoalest waters to which they can gain access. • 



The diet of the Spanish Mackerel is like that of the blue-fish, entirely 

 carnivorous, and there is no reason to doubt that the menhaden or moss- 

 bunker is its principal quaving. Mackerel, mullet, silversides and all our 

 other schooling species contribute also a share to its support. 



The breeding habits of this fish were never understood until the spring 

 of 1S80, when, to the astonishment of everyone, it was found by Mr. Earll 

 that their spawning grounds are in the Chesapeake Bay and at other 

 localities on the middle Atlantic coast, while Mr. Silas Stearns, almost 

 simultaneously discovered a breeding place in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. 

 Earll. to whom science is indebted for a most thorough and comprehensive 

 study of the reproductive habits of this fish, has published a full account 

 of his observations, and of his experiments in practical fish-culture in one 

 of the annual reports of the U. S. Fish Commission,* to which the reader 

 is referred for detailed statements, since it is not the purpose of this book 

 to enter into prolonged discussions of such a character. 



Mr. Earll found evidence that the species spawns not only in the Sandy 



■R. E. Earll. The Spanish Mackerel. Report U. S. Coram. Fisheries, 1880. (1883) pp. 395-426. 



