INLAND FISHERIES. 21 



Statement is corroborated by Captain Hinckley ; and Captain Hallet, 

 of Hyauuis, ' does not know where they spawn.' The only positive 

 evidence on this subject is that of Captain Pease, who states it as the 

 general impression about Edgartown that they spawn about the last of 

 July or the first of August. He has seen them when he thought the}^ 

 were spawning on the sand, having caught them a short time before, 

 full of spawn, and finding them afterwards for a time thin and weak. 

 He thinks their spawning ground is on the white sandy bottom to the 

 eastward of Martha's Vineyard, toward Muskeegut. While not dis- 

 crediting the statement of Mr. Pease, it seems a little remarkable that 

 so few persons on the eastern coast have noticed the spawning in the 

 summer of the blue-fish ; and although there may be exceptions to the 

 fact, it is not impossible that the spawning ground is in very early 

 spring, or even in winter, off New Jersey and Long Island or farther 

 south. It is not impossible that, at a suitable period after spawning, 

 the young, in obedience to their migratory instinct may move north- 

 ward along the coast, growing rapidly as they proceed. This explains 

 the almost sudden appearance of fish of fi.ve inches about Wood's Holl. 



"We have the statement of Dr. Yarrow that vast schools of small 

 blue-fish were met in Beaufort Harbor during the last week in Decem- 

 ber, 1871. These were in company with small schools of young men- 

 haden and yellow-tail shad, and were apparently working their way 

 toward the sea by the route of the inlet. When observed they were 

 coming from the southward through the sound, moving very slowly, at 

 times nearly leaving it, and then returning. 



The largest were about four inches in length, and others were much 

 smaller ; and as many as twenty schools were observed from the wharf 

 at Fort Macon, each of them occupying an area of from sixty to eighty 

 feet square, and apparently from four to six feet in depth. I would 

 not be much surprised if these fish should prove to have been spawned 

 late in the year off the southern coast." 



Dilligent search by numerous inquirers during a period of ten years 

 has failed to add .anything of importance to what Professor Baird has 

 already stated in the paragraph above quoted, and it may be regarded 



