FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 299 



General range. — Atlantic coast of the United States from Florida to Casco 

 Bay; very common as far north as Cape Cod. 



Occurrence in tie Gvlf of Maine. — The center of abundance of tliis species lies 

 south of the limits of the Gulf of Maine, but it has been taken at Monomoy, Truro, 

 and Provincetown, and is not imcommon in Cape Cod Bay, for Prof. A. E. Gross 

 informs us that he has seen as many as four or five taken in the trap at the mouth 

 of Barnstable Harbor at a tide during the early summer of 1920.^^ We have never 

 heard of one at Cohasset, however; and while Storer described it as common at 

 Nahant, a few miles northeast of Boston, this seems to have been an error, for 

 Wheatland (1852, p. 124), writing about the same period, not only spoke of it as 

 seldom seen in Massachusetts Bay, but considered a single specimen taken in 

 Salem Harbor in the summer of 1848 worthy of note. This still remains the only 

 record for Essex County. There is also a puffer labeled "Massachusetts Bay" in 

 the collection of the Boston Society of Natural History. During the summer of 

 1896 two puffers were taken in a trap in Casco Bay, this being the northernmost 

 record for the species. It is quite as rare a fish north of Boston as the paucity of 

 this printed record suggests. 



Habits and food. — Puffers are simimer fish on the southern New England coast, 

 appearing late in May or early in June, to disappear in October or November. 

 They are rarely seen far from land, usually in water only a few fathoms deep, 

 where they feed on small crustaceans of all sorts, especially crabs, shrimp, and 

 amphipods, as well as on small mollusks, worms, barnacles, sea urchins, and other 

 invertebrates, which they find on bottom. Young fry of 7 to 10 mm., examined 

 by Doctor Linton at Woods Hole, had eaten copepods and crustacean and moUuscan 

 larvJE. 



Puffers inflate on the slightest disturbance, in which state they float, belly up, 

 until they deflate. 



It is probable that puffers pass the winter in a more or less quiescent state on the 

 bottom in water slightly deeper than their usual summer haunts. They spawn in 

 summer, from June on, and in shoal water close to shore. The eggs (about 0.9 

 mm. in diameter, wdth many small oil globules) sink and stick fast to each other or to 

 whatever they touch. Incubation occupies 4}/^ to 5 days at a temperature of 67° 

 F. (19.5° C). The larvae at hatching are about 2.4 mm. long and brilliantly pig- 

 mented with red, orange, yellow, and black. In three days the mouth functions and 

 at 7 days the larvae are 2.6 mm. long. The later larval stages have not been de- 

 scribed, but at a length of 7 mm. the young fish show most of the diagnostic charac- 

 ters of the adults,^" and can inflate themselves even more — in fact until the bulging 

 skin entirely hides the dorsal and anal fins. 



» See also The Auk, Vol. XL, No. 1, January, 1933, p. 24. 



" Welsh and Breder (Zoologica, Vol. II, No. 12, January, 1922, New York) describe stages in the life history of the pufier. 



