88 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES PISH COMMISSION. 



and dynamite ? Or were they smitten with an epidemic or plague from 

 the sewage of cities turned into the sea' 2 Or did any noxious gases 

 evolved in connection with earthquake commotions have to do with 

 this remarkable phenomenon ? 



The farmers gathered them for manure to put ou their lands, but 

 millions were left to rot in the sunlight, and to exhale their pestiferous 

 odors in the surrounding atmosphere. Had there been an oil mill in the 

 vicinity one may think a small fortune might have been realized by at 

 once collecting and grinding them up for oil and fertilizers. 



Sunset Cottage, York, Me., August 26, 1884. 



Herring and mackerel eaten by squid. — Writing from Gur- 

 nett Life-Saving Station, Plymouth, Mass., November 15, 1884, the 

 keeper, Mr. John F. Holmes, states that during the last three or four 

 weeks large schools of squid and small herring, locally known as spir- 

 ling, have frequented the waters of that vicinity, and quite often during 

 the night more or less have been thrown upon the beach. This includes 

 both squid and herring, the herring predominating. Many of the her- 

 ring were found bitten on the back at the point where the head joins 

 the body, some of the heads being bitten entirely off, and 90 per cent, 

 of them being bitten in about the same place. The squid are quite 

 large, some of them measuring 26 inches from the end of the longest 

 tentacle to the end of the tail. Recently, between 6 and 8 o'clock p. m., 

 the water being very smooth, a large school of what was supposed to 

 be spilling was seen close to the shore. Two men ran into the surf and 

 kicked more or less specimens on the beach. These proved to be squid 

 and spirling, each squid having a spirling grasped in its tentacles, and 

 each having already gnawed a hole in the spirling. The beach, 

 for a distance of or 8 miles, has been strewn with these spirling for 

 some time. More or less squid and some mackerel have been found 

 among them. The spirling and mackerel had been bitten in the manner 

 described in almost every instance. Upon examination some of the 

 squid were found to have their suckers stuffed with minced herring. 



Commenting upon the above, Captain Collins, under date of November 

 21, 1884, says : 



"The facts are not entirely new to me, so far as the habits of the 

 squid are concerned. It is not an uncommon thing to see squid attack 

 capelin ou the Grand Bank, and so extremely voracious are these ani- 

 mals that they have sometimes been caught on a jig while still clinging 

 fast to a capelin which they held in their beak and arms. It would 

 appear from this that they are in the habit, at least occasionally, of 

 attacking a second small fish before they have eaten the first they 

 caught. 



"In former years, when I was engaged in the mackerel hook fishery 

 in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, squid sometimes — particularly towards 

 evening — came alongside of the vessel witli the mackerel, and I have 



