19- 



AM ERIC AN FISHES. 



sionally taken on trolling tackle in use in blue-fishing, but is never so far 

 as I am aware, a definite object of pursuit. 



Genio C. Scott wrote, in 1875 : " My experience in trolling for Spanish 

 Mackerel off the inlets of Fire Island has convinced me that the fish is as 

 numerous as the blue-fish, and more so than the striped bass, at certain 

 seasons, and is found a. little farther seaward than either of those fishes." 



"Every year the shoals of Spanish Mackerel become more and more 

 numerous, and more are taken, but never in sufficient nembers to reduce 

 the average price below sixty cents per pound. The shoals which I saw 

 when last trolling for them would have formed an area nearly five miles 

 square, and still the most successful boat did not take more than a dozen 

 in three days. They will not bite freely at any artificial lure, and though 

 numbers came near leaping on the deck of our yacht, they treated our 

 lures with an indifference Avhich savored of perverseness." 



Trolling seems to be more productive in the Gulf of IMexico than far- 

 ther north. 



Mr. Thaddeus Norris states that in the Gulf of Mexico, they are some- 

 times taken by hook and line, with shrimp-bait at the end of the long 

 p'ers where the steamers land in Mobile to New Orleans. 



THE SILVER CERO. 



The early chronicles of the colonies seem to contain no references to 

 the Spanish Mackerel under its present name, but it seems certain that this 

 fish was the speckled hound-fish, spoken of in that renowned work, " New 

 England Rarities, Discovered in Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents and Plants 

 of that country, etc., by John Josselyn, Gent," published in 1672. 

 Josselyn wrote of " Blew-fish or hound-fish, two kinds, speckled hound- 

 fish, called horse-fish." The blue-hound-fish can be nothing else than the 

 common blue-fish of our coast, {^Pomatomus saltatrix), and no species in 

 the western Atlantic, other than our Spanish Mackerel, sufiiciently resem- 

 bles the blue-fish to warrant the use of so similar a name. ]\Iitchill referred 



