THE MULLETS. 



37 1 



after hatching. It is also likely that their manner of spawning and feed- 

 ing is the same everywhere. My own observations have been chiefly 

 made in Pensacola and Choctowhatchee Bays and Santa Rosa Sound, 

 which take in fifty miles of coast line. In this section, which I have called 

 the Pensacola region, there is a spring ' run ' of Mullet composed of 

 various sizes of young which are in part, no doubt, of the previous year's 

 hatching. The first school of this run appears on the coast in April or in 

 the first part of May, and they continue to come for two or three weeks, 

 when they are all inside and scattered about the bay shores. These fish 

 are very thin on their arrival, but rapidly fatten and grow on the feeding 

 grounds. Some of these contain spawn at first, and in some it is developed 

 during the summer. 



" In September and October there is a ' run ' of large fish, which comes, 

 as usual from the eastward, the fish swimming at the surface of the 

 water and making considerable commotion. Some years there is but one 

 large school in the ' run ' and at others many small schools, and it is 

 thought that the fish are more abundant when they come in the latter 

 form. At Chotawhatchee Inlet, when the spawning grounds are near by, 

 the fish come in with the flood tide and go out again with the ebb tide ; 

 and at the Pensacola Inlet, when the- spawning grounds are far away, they 

 come into the bay and stay until the operation of spawning is over. The 

 spawn in this fall ' run ' is fully developed, and is deposited in October 

 and November. The spawning grounds are in fresh or brackish water at the 

 heads of bayous, in rivers or heads of bays. The many bayous of Choc- 

 tawhatchee Bay are almost blocked up with spawning Mullet in October, 

 and they are very abundant at the head of Pensacola Bay near the mouths 

 of fresh-water rivers at that time. Although I have been in the bayous 

 when Mullet were supposed to be spawning, I have not witnessed the 

 operation, nor seen any person who has. In such places the bottom is 

 grassy, sandy, and muddy, the water varying with the tide from fresh to 

 brackish, and of a temperature varying from 70 to 75 F. It is sup- 

 posed that the spawn is deposited upon the bottom. If they hate been 

 spawning at the times when I have been present, I would say that the 

 operation was a general one. That they do spawn at or near these places 

 is quite certain, for they go to them with spawn and come away without 

 it, and the young fry first appear near the same places. Crabs and alli- 

 gators are abundant in such places, and they doubtless destroy many 



