210 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



the Smithsonian Institution tried in vain to secure a single specimen. In the 

 summer of 1879, however, a school was taken in the weirs at Provincetown (where, 

 as it chanced, representatives of the Bureau of Fisheries were stationed at the 

 time), and although none were seen in 1880 the fish was not uncommon off the 

 coast of New York in 1886. We find no definite record of its status during the next 

 decade. In 1896, however, according to Bean (1903), it abounded along the shores 

 of New York, running up little creeks in such numbers that it was dipped in boat 

 loads. During that August 69 "hardheads" were taken singly and in schools by the 

 mackerel fleet on Georges Bank, while many were caught on hook and line from 

 the Grampus in Block Island Sound during the first week of September. In 1898 

 Kendall found it at Monomoy, the southerly elbow of Cape Cod, and it was then 

 sufficiently reestablished for Smith (1898) to describe it as uncommon to abun- 

 dant at Woods Hole. It then dropped out of the pubbshed record (it is not sep- 

 arated from the common mackerel in the fishery returns) until 1900, when it was 

 found in the Casco Bay region. There is no reason to suppose that the fish ap- 

 peared anywhere on our coasts in any numbers during the period 1898 to 1906, 

 but in the latter year and again in 1908 an abundance was taken in the traps near 

 Woods Hole, and in 1909 the mackerel fleet encountered great schools of hard- 

 heads on Georges Bank, vessels bringing in 50,000 to 100,000 each during the first 

 week of July. 70 The fact that these were all small (500 to 700 to the barrel) sug- 

 gests that there had been a great production of hardheads a year or two previous. 

 Since that time fishermen speak of catching a few from time to time, but no great 

 numbers. 



The hardhead is distinctly a more southern fish than the mackerel, with the 

 Gulf of Maine as its northern limit and Georges Bank apparently its eastern bound 

 off the American coast. We find no record of it within the Gulf of Maine east of 

 the neighborhood of Casco Bay, it being unknown in the Bay of Fundy, nor does it 

 seem to reach the west Nova Scotian coast. In its rare years of plenty, however, 

 it is apt to appear wherever mackerel do in Massachusetts Bay, especially about 

 Provincetown, and Capt. E. E. Merchant, an old and observant fisherman, described 

 them as so abundant from 1812 to 1820 that three men and a boy could catch 3,000 

 in a day on hook and line. The other definite Gulf of Maine records are mostly 

 about Casco Bay. 



Habits. — -Hardheads school like mackerel, and their feeding habits are evidently 

 the same, for Doctor Kendall found the fish on Georges Bank in August, 1896, full 

 of the same species of pelagic Crustacea and Sagitta? as the mackerel had taken at 

 the same time and place, while specimens taken at Woods Hole had dieted chiefly 

 on copepods, to a less extent on amphipods, Salpse, appendicularians, and young 

 herring. They follow thrown bait as readily and bite quite as greedily as mack- 

 erel do. Its breeding habits have not been followed. 



Commercial importance. — The chub mackerel is as choice a table fish as the 

 mackerel, and no distinction, other than that of the size of the individual fish, is 

 made between them in the market. 



«• Field notes supplied by Dr. W. C. Kendall. 

 7 ° Boston Herald, July 9. 1919. 



