THE GAME FISH OF N ?r»TH AJIERICA. . 31 



I have often derived both information and entertainment from this good 

 little manual, which is succinct and portable, and I strongly recom- 

 mend it to my readers. 



The feat to which 1 have alluded is thus recorded in its pages: — 

 " On Friday last, a gentleman of this city went out fishing from 

 Rockaway into Jamaica Bay, with his son, a lad of twelve years of 

 age. They commenced fishing at half-past seven in the morning, 

 spent half an hour in dining at noon, and quit fishing at half-past one, 

 having taken with their rods, in six hours, four hundred and seventy- 

 tioc King- Fish. Their guide was Joseph Bannister; none of these 

 fish were taken by him, as he was diligently employed the whole time 

 in preparing bait." 



The writer adds that he admits this to have been "an extraordi- 

 nary performance;" but he goes on to say "that he has many times 

 taken above one hundred in a tide, though of late years these fish 

 have become scarce in those waters, it being supposed that their enemy, 

 the Blue-Fish, by preying on their young, have caused the scarcity." 

 It is scarcely necessai-y, I presume, to remark that no such feats 

 are to be performed now-a-days ; and he is a happy and an envied man, 

 who succeeds, at present, in capturing a few brace of this delicious 

 game fish. 



I now come to the last saction of my work, the deep-sea fishes, very 

 few of which are worthy of remark in connexion with the angler's 

 sport, although they are all of superior excellence, as dainties. 



These are all soft-finned fishes, but they form a separate class of 

 the M'dacopfcrygii^ owing to a peculiar arrangement of their fins, the 

 bones supporting the ventrals being attached to the bones of the shoul- 

 ders which support the pectorals, whence they have obtained the term 

 sub-brachial. 



To this class of sub-brachial Mnlacopterygii belong the two families 

 of GadUlcc and Pleioronectidce^ Cod and Fiat-Fish, to one or other of 

 which pertain all the species which are taken by the drop-line on our 

 coast ; a sport which is almost too dirty, as well as too laborious, to be 

 in very truth a sport. 



Of the family GndidcE, of which the Cod is the type, we have 

 The Common Cod, Morrhui Vulgaris. 

 The Haddock, Morrhua ^glejinis. 



