COBIA, MOON-FISH AND FLASHER. 145 



only taken singly with a hook. It li\c.s on the coast of Carolina late ir, 

 May, and is occasionally captured until September, when it is no longer 

 seen in our waters. It is exceedingly voracious, and destroys many 

 smaller lish, which make its ordinary food, though it does not reject 

 crustaceous animals." 



Mitchill dissected a specimen caught in New York Bay obtained b\' 

 him in the city market in June, 1815. He found its stomach dis- 

 tended with food of various sorts, including twenty spotted sand-crabs 

 and several young flounders. DeKay tells us that the specimen from 

 which his description was taken was captured in a seine in the harbor of 

 Boston and placed in a car with other fish. It was soon discovered that 

 it had destroyed and eaten every fish in the car. These fish were chiefly 

 sculpins and porgies. Mr. S. C. Clarke, speaking of the fish fauna of 

 Florida, remarks: "This fish I have never seen except in the Indian 

 River, where it is a common species, lying under the mangrove bushes in 

 Avait for jjrey like a pike, which it much resembles in form and in the long 

 under jaw full of sharp teeth." The size is from two to three feet. It 

 attains the length of five feet and the weight of fifteen or twenty pounds. 



The Cobia breeds in the Chesapeake Bay, where in 18S0 Mr. R. E. 

 Earll succeeded in artificially fertilizing the eggs. Dr. jNIitchill speaks of 

 its availability as a food-fish in the highest terms. 



It is occasionally taken by trolling lines in the Gulf, and seems to be 

 regarded with favor by the anglers who have made its acquaintance. Mr. 

 W. C. Prime, whose charming book, " I Go a Fishing," has become one 

 of the classics of Wallonian literature, Avrites : 



" In shape he may be roughly likened to the great northern pike, with 

 a similar head, flattened on the forehead. He is dark green on the back, 

 growing lighter on the sides, but the distinguishing characteristic is a 

 broad, dark collar over the neck, from which two black stripes or strajjs, 

 parting on the shoulders, extend, one on each side, to the tail. He looks 

 as if harnessed with a pair of traces, and his behavior on a fly-rod is that 

 of a wild horse. The first one that I struck, in the brackish water of 

 Hillsborough River at Tampa, gave me a hitherto unknown sensation. 

 The tremendous rush was not unfamiliar, but when the fierce fellow took 

 the top of the water and went along lashing it with his tail, swift as a 

 bullet, then descended, and with a short, sharp, electric shock left the 

 line to come home free, I was for an instant confounded. It was all over 

 in ten seconds. Nearly every fish that I struck after this behaved in the 



