FLYING FISHES AND THEIR HABITS. 50o 



small fishes. The fishes are, in fact, almost omnivorous, as may U 

 understood from the njeans of ea})ture used b}' professional fisher- 

 men and anglers. 



III. 



Their procreative cliaracteristies are very little known. Accounts 

 are contradictory, but it may be because there is a difference in this 

 respect between different species or even different shoals. Mathew 

 (1873) was " inclined to fancy " that they spaAvned "• in mid-ocean," 

 for he had " seen them not an inch long more than 1,000 miles from 

 the nearest land, and these minute specimens Avhen in the air bear a 

 strong resemblance to locusts on the wing.*" Many young have been 

 observed and collected by others in mid-ocean. There is, in fact, little 

 if any, doubt that some do spawn far from land. Howard Saunders, 

 an excellent ornithologist, however, found large shoals about rocks 

 and inferred that they were there to spawn (1874). "" At the Chincha 

 Islands, on the coast of Peru," Saunders oliserved numbers of an un- 

 identified species make " their api^earance about the last week in 

 March, and the water round the rocks was alive with them, the nu- 

 merous fissures and crevices seeming all too few for their require- 

 ments. Looking down through the clear water," he " could see a 

 moving nuiss struggling for places, and, respecting a long narrow rift, 

 one of the sailors remarked that it was ' just like the pit on boxing 

 night.' " As many as were wanted " could be taken with the hand 

 from the fissures in the rocks." At the time Saunders '' never noticed 

 these flying fish ' on the wing,' " and inferred that " doubtless they 

 were too heavy." " 



The author of an article on " flying fish catching in Barbados," con- 

 tributed to Chambers's Journal (1804) , claims that there is " no doubt 

 that they deposit their ova in the massive banks of ' Sargasso 

 [ = Sargassum] bacciferum,' or Gulf-weed, which is met with in such 

 vast quantities as to impede a vessel's progress through it. Through 

 the pleasant groves and avenues of these floating forests the young 

 fr}^ in millions disport in comparative security." The author claims 

 also to have " often amused " himself " by catching the young fry 

 thrown up with piles of Gulf-weed on the beach and seen masses 

 of the spawn, like huge bunches of white currants, entangled among 

 its close-knit fronds." These bunches were probably from the Anten- 

 narioid mouse-fish {Pterophvyiie hiHtrio)^ and the young fry may 

 have been misidentified. 



a Mr. F. A. Lucas writes to nie that " in regard to the flying fish. Exococtus, my 

 experience at the Chincha Islands was similar to that of Mr. Saunders except 

 that I did not find them so abundant. I saw them in the water and caught 

 some with the grains, but never saw one fly there." 



