180 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



Color. — Translucent bottle green above, with top of head, nose, and chin dusky. 

 The upper sides are thickly specked with dark brown, and there is a silver band 

 outlined above by a narrow black streak, running along each side from close behind 

 the pectoral fin to the base of the caudal. The belly is white. 



Size. — The silverside grows to a length of 6 inches or more, adults usually being 

 4 or 5 inches long. 



General range. — The northern variety of the common silverside is known from 

 Halifax to the Capes of Delaware, south of which it gives place to intergrades or 

 to the southern form, and the latter in its turn has been detected as far north as 

 Woods Hole, but never east of Cape Cod. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The silverside is to be found all around the 

 shores of the Gulf from Nova Scotia to Cape Cod, always, however, closely confined 

 to the coast line and as a rule within a few yards of the tide line. There is no reason 

 to suppose that this fish ever ventures out to sea or descends deeper than a fathom 

 or two. Many summers spent on the coast leave us with the impression that, 

 generally speaking, the silverside is neither as omnipresent nor as abundant in the 

 Gulf as it is south of Cape Cod. However, great schools of them are often to be 

 seen along the sandy beaches, particularly in Cape Cod Bay and here and there on 

 the Maine coast. Bushels have been caught in a single haul of the seine in Casco 

 Bay and very likely could be elsewhere, but silversides are seldom seen along the 

 stretches of rocky coast exposed to the open sea, which make up a large part of the 

 shore line of the Gulf of Maine. 



Silversides are extremely gregarious, congregating in schools usually made up 

 of even-sized individuals. They frequent sandy or gravelly shores chiefly, and at 

 high tide are often seen among the sedge grass (Spartina) , where it grows sparsely 

 between tide marks, particularly about the inner bays and in river mouths where 

 they follow the tide up and down the beach within a few yards of the water's edge. 

 They also run up into brackish water. The Bay of Fundy affords a good example 

 of the influence the character of the shore line plays in determining the distribution 

 of silversides, for according to Huntsman they are chiefly restricted to brackish 

 water about St. Andrews but are more generally distributed on the New Brunswick 

 shore further up the bay and on the Nova Scotian side as a whole. Silversides are 

 probably resident throughout the year wherever found. Such, at least, is the case 

 in southern New England. 



Food. — Silversides are omnivorous, feeding chiefly on copepods, mysids, small 

 shrimps, amphipods, fish eggs (including their own!), young squid, annelids, Clado- 

 cera, molluscan larvae, and young prawns. Insects that fall into the water have 

 also been found in their stomachs, as have algoe and diatoms mixed with sand and 

 mud. 



Breeding habits. 19 — Silversides spawn in May, June, and early July on the south- 

 ern New England coast. Spawning may commence a little later in the Gulf of 

 Maine, corresponding to lower temperature. The fish then gather in shoals to 

 deposit their eggs on sandy bottom, often among the sedge grass or even above low- 



» Kuntz and Radclifle (1918, p. 127) describe its development, and Hildebrand (Bulletin, U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, Vol. 

 XXXVIII, 1921-22 (1923) that of the southern race. 



