BONITOES AND TUNNIES. 217 



informs me that it regularly visits St. Margaret's Bay every summer, 

 several specimens being taken and rendered down for oil. They were 

 particularly abundant in 1876. They are not seen in the Basin of 

 Minas." 



According to Dr. Fortin the Horse Mackerel is quite abundant in the 

 (julf of St. Lawrence, especially in the Days of Chaleur and of Gaspe, and 

 also in the Straits of Belle Isle and Blancs Sablon Bay. It is taken in 

 increasing numbers in the gulf, partly by spearing and partly by baiting. 

 For this latter purpose strong steel hooks are used tied to solid lines and 

 baited with herring. This fishing is prosecuted more particularly in the 

 Bay of Chaleur and off Caraquette, where in 1863 over one hundred were 

 captured. The fishing is quite exciting, although tiresome and requiring 

 a good deal of skill, as in the efforts of the fishes to escape they pull with 

 such violence as to endanger the lives of the fishermen by dragging them 

 overboard.* 



Capt. Atwood contributes the following note on Horse Mackerel in 

 Cape Cod Bay : 



" They don't come till the weather gets warm. We don't see them at 

 first when we begin setting mackerel nets, but about June they are liable 

 to appear, and we find holes in the nets. Sometimes in September they 

 gill them for the sake of their oil. My brother had forty-seven holes 

 through one eighty-yard net in one night. When they strike a net they 

 go right through it, and when they go through it the hole immediately 

 becomes round. It looks as if you could put a half bushel through it. 

 I said in my Lowell Institute lectures that a shark in going through a net 

 Avould roll himself up in it, but the Horse jNIackerel get right through, 

 and the hole they cut could be mended in five minutes. The fishermen 

 don't dread them much because they do the nets so little injury. They 

 remain with us through the summer and early autumn, when they are 

 killed for the oil. When they are here they feed upon any small fish, and 

 Avhen menhaden were here I have seen them drive the harbor full of them. 

 I have seen the Horse Mackerel swallow dogfish whole weighing eight 

 pounds. As fast as we got out the livers of the dogfish they would catch 

 them and eat them. There was a great deal of whiting here at that time. 

 They have almost totally disappeared. The Horse Mackerel seems to be 

 the enemy of all kinds of fish. There is nothing to trouble the Horse 



* Canadian Fishery Report for 1862-63. 



