2 1 o AMERICAN FISHES. 



Each summer the schools now range the ocean between Cape Cod and 

 Cape Hatteras, and about Block Island and the eastern end of Long 

 Island fabulous quantities are often captured. 



The habits of the Bonito are similar to those of the bluefish, though it 

 is, if possible, even more active and more an embodiment of perpetual and 

 insatiable hunger. They come at the same time, they leave the coast 

 simultaneously, they prey in company upon menhaden and mackerel, and 

 together they are often caught in the fisherman's gill-net or are detained 

 in the labyrinths of the pound-net. The two kinds of fish do not, it is 

 supposed, mingle, but the regiments rush to battle side by side. 



Sometimes two lines in one boat will fasten at the same time a bluefish 

 and a Bonito. The Bonito, like the bluefish, appear to be attracted to 

 our waters by the great schools of mackerel and menhaden, upon which 

 they feed. 



Schools of Bonitoes cause more commotion than those of bluefish ; they 

 spring out of the water, and are visible at long distances. They are 

 attended by the same schools of screaming gulls and terns, and leave in 

 their track similar " slicks " of oil and blood. 



The Bonito is an alien m our seas. It comes here only for food, and 

 in winter disappears entirely. It does not, like the bluefish, follow the 

 trend of the coast to the south, to pass the cold months off the shoals of 

 Hatteras. No very young individuals of this kind have ever been obtained 

 in the western Atlantic, although young bluefish, from two to eight inches 

 long, may be caught in summer by tens of thousands on any sand beach 

 south of INIonomoy. Genio C. Scott records the capture of one in 

 Jamaica Bay in 1874 weighing less than a pound, and which he believes 

 to have been hatched the previous year. The Fish Commission also has 

 one of the same size taken off Southern New England. Charles Potter, 

 of Norwalk, Conn., states that small specimens, six inches in length, were 

 from 1870 to 1874 frequently taken late in the fall in the weirs at Fisher's 

 Island. 



A fish weighing ten pounds measures twenty-eight to twenty-nine 

 inches; eight pounds, twenty-seven to twenty-eight inches ; seven pounds, 

 twenty-six to twenty-seven inches ; six pounds, twenty-five to twenty-six 

 inches ; four pounds, twenty-two to twenty-three inches. There have not 

 yet been found in the adults any traces of mature spawn, though one taken 

 off Norwalk July 23, 1874, had the eggs well formed though not nearly 



