REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 71 



are inhabited by this species. Its usual southwartl range on the 

 European coast is to the EngHsh Channel, but stray specimens have 

 sometimes been taken in deep water off the coast of France. On 

 the American coast of the Atlantic, its natural southerly, limit is 

 Cape Cod, but occasional individuals wander southward to Sandy 

 Hook. It is said that halibut were formerly quite abundant about 

 Vineyard Sound and Block Island, but for many years they have been 

 very rare south of Cape Cod. There is no record of a capture of a 

 halibut south of Sandy Hook, where several large ones have been 

 captured in winter. On the Pacific coast, they range southward to 

 the Farallones off San Francisco. The geographical range of the 

 halibut coincides closely with that of the cod, though the latter is 

 somewhat less confined to cold, since it ranges 4° or 5° F. further 

 south; the cod, also, in winter is very abundant off the southern 

 shore of New England where the halibut is very rare, while the 

 halibut also strays further out into deeper and colder water than the 

 cod. 



In Rhode Island waters only a few instances of the capture of 

 halibut have been recorded in the last quarter of a century. In 

 February, 1876, a few were taken about eight miles from the south- 

 east point of Block Island; on May 1, 1876, off Watch Hill, an eighty- 

 pound halibut was taken, the first in that vicinity for many years; 

 during that same month many halibut were taken about ten miles 

 southeast of Montauk Point; one or two in the last sixty years have 

 been taken off the outer shore of Fisher's Island; on April 16, 1900, 

 a one-hundred-pound halibut was brought to Newport which had 

 been captured with others off Block Island by a cod fisherman. 



The normal habitat of the halibut is upon the offshore banks and 

 the edges of the continental slope; it is found in all depths ranging 

 from shoal water near shore out to a depth of three hundred fathoms 

 or more. It seems to be most abundant at considerable depths, 

 from fifty to one hundred fifty fathoms. 



In the course of the last century the center of the abundance of 

 this species seems to have shifted many times. A hundred years 



