BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



size to enter it and deposit her eggs. We can only 

 surmise that the eggs are scattered out in the 

 waters of the gulf, sink to the bottom and hatch, 

 and that the young, either as leptocephalids or 

 as very small larval fish, make their way into the 

 lagoon before the season when it becomes cut off 

 from the gulf. Here they live and thrive, with an 

 abundance of food, sheltered from voracious fish 

 and other dangers of the open sea, having to guard 

 only against the keen eyes and sharp beaks of the 

 larger herons, and such unthinkable catastrophes 

 as visiting scientists. 



Mr. Gray Griswold writes me that "There is a 

 small lake on Den Island, San Carlos Bay, Florida 

 west coast, that contains small tarpon. It is back 

 of St. James City, has no inlet to the sea nor has 

 the sea invaded it in the memory of man. It is 

 supposed the spawn was dropped there by birds, 

 or carried to the lake on the back of alligators. 

 I have a specimen about seven inches long in a 

 bottle. The posterior ray is fully developed on 

 this fish as it was on a dead specimen I once picked 

 up on the beach three inches long. I have taken 

 them on a hook in Cuba not more than four inches 

 long fully developed." 



One of my Haitian fishermen took two good- 

 sized tarpon in his seine not far off shore from 

 Source Matelas. These were thirty-six pounders, 

 more than forty-one inches in length. 



When diving on Lamentin Reef, several miles 

 across the gulf, I saw a large tarpon again and 



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