Report of commissioners Of inland fisheries. 5 



of the ocean that visit our waters, and strangely enough no past inves- 

 tigation has revealed their location or history while absent from us. 

 While considering this part of our subject, we find the following para- 

 graph in one of our papers, which, if it fails to establish facts that will 

 give light upon this mysterious question, is not without interest : 



" Where the Mackerel Are.— The United States Fish Commissioners say 

 that there are plenty of fish somewhere all the year round, and that what are 

 caught by the fishermen do not deplete their number to any great extent. These 

 commissioners prove their statements as a general thing, and have done so in 

 regard to the mackerel. Last season this commission hired a man to go to the 

 Cape of Good Hope to look for mackerel on that coast, the commission to pay 

 him and his expenses for the trip. He was from Harwich, Mass., a well known 

 mackerel killer. When he arrived at the coast of Africa, the shores were teem- 

 ing with mackerel eighteen inches long and fat. They were easy to catch. He 

 soon captured a cargo of mackerel and the vessel is nearly due. He could not 

 obtain barrels there the kind usually used for fish, so he put the fish down in 

 wine barrels. The man informed the fish commissioners that he would pay his 

 own expenses, without recourse to them. He will make one thousand dollars, at 

 least, out of this single cargo. It appears that the mackerel have gone across the 

 ocean, perhaps for a few years' pastime. Probably a fleet of mackerel schooners 

 will go there from the United States as soon as full returns are given from this 

 vessel. — Fall River Neics" 



If it should be proved that what we have been accustomed to con- 

 sider as our own fish, by their long residence in or near our waters, are 

 cosmopolitans, and claim the world as their own and vary their loca- 

 tion without limit of space as the season changes, then have we a phase 

 of this question not before presented to us. It has long been known 

 that mackerel have been found in widely separated parts of the world, 

 while of some of the others of the fish that periodically visit us, such 

 as the scup for instance, are believed to be peculiar to this locality, 

 and to a comparative restricted portion of the coast. The most impor- 

 tant of the wandering fishes that yearly visit us are the scup, mackerel, 

 horse-mackerel, bass, squeteague, sea-bass, herring and menhaden. 



On these wandering fishes of the ocean we chiefly depend for our 

 summer fishing. They appear on our coast the last of April, or more 



