72 REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 



Conger eel, see Mcintosh and Mastermann, British Marine Food fishes, 

 1897, 450; Ehrenbaum, Nordisches Plankton, 10, 1909, 384. For a 

 description of eggs and larvse, see Eigenmann, Bull. U. S. Fish Com. 

 XXI, 1901, 37. For the American Leptocephalus forms, see Eigenmann 

 and Kennedy, Bull. U. S. Fish Com., XXI, 1901, 81.) 



Food: Fishes, snails, shrimp, worms. According to the Lewis Brothers of 

 Wickford, small lobsters are frequently found in stomachs of congers. 



Size: Average, four to six feet. Smallest observed at Woods Hole are 

 15 to 20 inches long. 



ELOPID^. The Tarpons. 

 35. Tarpon atlantlcus (Cuvier and Valenciennes). Tarpon. 



Geog. Dist.: Cape Cod to Brazil; common in the West Indies; on the 

 coast this species is most abundant in Florida and Texas. Recorded 

 from Massachusetts at South Dartmouth, Quisset, Menemsha (Smith 

 1898), Martha's Vineyard, Woods Hole (Sherwood and Edwards, 1901). 



Migrations: On the southern coast of Florida it appears in February 

 and increases rapidly in numbers in March, April and May; in Texas 

 it appears early in March. About the first of December they disappear 

 from Florida and Texas. In tropical seas, they may be found always; 

 at Tampico, Mexico, they are most abundant from November first until 

 April, which coincides with the time when they are absent from Florida 

 and Texas. 



Habitat: Tropical waters; ascends streams in pursuit of small fry. 



Season in R. I. : Rare. Stragglers are reported by the fishermen. Several 

 on record from Newport and Sakonnet, all of which were taken in the 

 month of August so far as is known. Specimen taken August, 1874, 

 at Newport, by Mr. Samuel Powell (photograph No. 398, in U. S. Nat. 

 Mus.). In 1895, two tarpon taken in trap in Coddington Cove, Newport, 

 one weighing over 100 pounds ; later, one was caught at Bailey's Point, 

 Middletown, and sometime after that another taken off High Hill, on 

 Portsmouth shore of Sakonnet River; all these were taken in August (J. 

 G. Costello, of the Newport News) . Mr. J. M. K. Kjiowles, of Wakefield, 

 is authority for the statement that a tarpon five feet long and weighing 

 30 pounds was taken near Dutch Island Harbor, Narragansett Bay, in 

 1900. On August 11, 1906, three tarpon caught in trap off Second 

 Beach, near Purgatory, one weighing 97 pounds, and the other two 

 together, 90 pounds; a few days later, two more were taken in the same 

 trap, each somewhat smaller than the large one referred to just above. 



