272 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHEBIES 



weigh from 1 to 6 pounds and are \Yi to iy 2 feet long. An average of 5 pounds 

 has been reported for Massachusetts Bay, but this is probably excessive. The 

 average proportion between length and weight is about as follows: 



Length in inches Weight in pounds 



12 to 14 % to 1 



14 to 16 IVa to 2 



is to 20 \y 3 xoiy^ 



22 to 2zy 2 Zy^toWi 



25^2 to 27H 5 to 6 



General range. — Eastern coast of the United States from Massachusetts Bay to 

 the Gulf of Mexico. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The chief center of abundance of the weak- 

 fish is the coast of the middle Atlantic States from New York southward. It occurs 

 regularly to Cape Cod. The stock of weakfish fluctuates widely on the southern 

 New England coast, and it is only during periods of great abundance there that 

 it appears in any numbers in Massachusetts Bay, which may be set as the extreme 

 northern limit for its appearance in any numbers. ° In the years when it has 

 passed Cape Cod in appreciable numbers it has always been far more plentiful along 

 the inner side of the cape and in Cape Cod Bay than north of Boston, as appears 

 from the following statement of catches for 1906: 



Cape Cod Bay: Pounds 



Provincetown 115, 789 



Truro 202,050 



Brewster 137,659 



Sandwich 6, 221 



North Shore, Massachusetts Bay: 



Nahant 369 



Manchester 410 



Twenty thousand pounds were also returned from Gloucester, but we have 

 reason to believe that although landed there the fish were caught in Cape Cod 

 Bay, and though traps have been operated at Rockport and at Newburyport they 

 have taken no weakfish. 



Fortunately the statistics of the pound-net fishery cover the inception, climax, 

 and eclipse of the only invasion of Massachusetts Bay by weakfish that has occurred 

 within the past century. 51 Apparently weakfish were plentiful off southern New 

 England during the last part of the eighteenth century, and to judge from fisher- 

 men's reports weakfish were well known in Massachusetts Bay at that time; but 

 they vanished so completely sometime prior to 1800 that when a single stray 

 specimen was taken at Provincetown in June, 1838, it was sent to Boston for identi- 

 fication. This disappearance was evidently but part of a general phenomenon of 

 the same sort covering the whole northern part of the range'of the species, for it 

 disappeared similarly from the Nantucket-Marthas Vineyard region sometime 



» It is credited indefinitely to "Maine" by Holmes (1862); Goode, et al. (1884, p. 362), state that scattering individuals have 

 been caught as far as the Bay of Fundy; and Halkett (1913) mentions one as probably caught off Nova Scotia. 



11 There are intimations in the writings of the early historians of New England of similar disappearances and returns of 

 the weakflsh (Goode, et al., 1884, p. 363). 



