FISHES OP NEW YORK 565 



Fishes of New York will substantiate the fact: " The sheepshead 

 swims in shoals and is sometimes surrounded in great numbers 

 by the seine. Several hundreds have often been taken at a sin- 

 gle haul with the long sweeping-nets in use at Raynortown, 

 Babylon and Fire Island. They even tell of a thousand brought 

 to land at a draught. . . This fish is sometimes speared by torch- 

 light in the wide and shallow bays of Queens county and Suffolk. 

 His term of continuance is only during the warmest season; 

 that is, from the beginning of June to the middle of September. 

 ... I have, however, known him to stay later; for one of the 

 most numerous collections of sheepshead I ever saw in the New 

 York market was on October 4, 1814; I have seen them as late 

 as the 17th." 



Scott, in 1875, referred to Fire Island as a good locality for 

 sheepshead fishing, and also mentions superior feeding places 

 in the South bay and about the wreck of the Blaek Warrior, 

 near the Narrows. 



We did not obtain the sheepshead in Great South bay, and 

 believe it occurs there very rarely at the present time, though 

 fishermen still seek them in a few localities and, I am informed, 

 occasionally catch one. Dr Smith says not one has been seen 

 or heard of in Vineyard sound or Buzzards bay since 1894; but 

 formerly it was quite common and was often caught while line- 

 fishing for tautog and scup. 



Family gerridae 



Mojarras 

 Genus eucinostomus Baird & Girard 

 Interhaemal bone of the second anal spine greatly modified, 

 expanded into a hollow cylinder, into which the posterior end 

 of the air bladder enters. Preopercle and preorbital entire; 

 body comparatively elongate, subelliptic in form; anal spines 

 three; the second anal spine and fourth dorsal spine not greatly 

 enlarged. Species numerous in warm seas, remarkable for the 

 structure of the second interhaemal, which is formed somewhat 

 as in Calamus, but much more modified than in the latter 

 genus. 



