THE SPAXISH MACKEREL. 



THE SPANISH MACKEREL AND THE CEROES. 



Sooner shall cats disport in water clear 



And speckled mackrels graze the meadows clear 



Than I forget mj' shepherds wonted love. 



Gay. Pastorals , 1714. 



Next morn they rose and set up every sail 

 The wind was fair, but blew a mackrel gale. 



Dryden. The Hind ami the Panther. 1687. 



'npHE Spanish Mackerel is surely one of the most graceful of fishes. It 

 appeals as scarcely any other can to our love of beauty, when Ave look 

 upon it, as shown in Kilbourn's well-known painting, darting like an 

 arrow just shot from the bow, its burnished sides, silver flecked with 

 gold, thrown into bold relief by the cool green background of the rippled 

 sea ; the transparent greys, opalescent whites and glossy blacks of its 

 trembling fins, enhance the metallic splendor of its body, until it seems to 

 rival the most brilliant of tropical birds. Kilbourn made copies of his 

 large painting on the pearly linings of sea-shells, and produced some 

 wonderful effects by allowing the natural lustre of the mother-of-pearl, to 

 show through his transparent pigments and simulate the brilliancy of the 

 life-inspired hues of the quivering, darting sea-sprite, whose charms even 

 his potent brush could not properly depict. 



It is a lover of the sun, a fish of tropical nature, which comes to us 

 only in midsummer, and which disappears with the a])proach of cold, to 

 some region not yet explored by ichthyologists. It is doubtless very 

 familiar in winter to the inhabitants of some region adjacent to the waters 

 of the Caribbean or the tropical Atlantic, but until this ])lace shall have 

 been discovered it is more satisfactory to suppose that with the bluu fish 



