CHAPTER VII. 



The Black Drum. — Ptxjotiias r-/n-ojn/.<.— Lacep. 



The drum is the largest fish caught with hook and line that visite 

 the Eastern coast. Of this fish there are two distinctly different 

 varieties, distinguished by the coloring. The black drum and the 

 red drum, although thus differently marked, are not, as many sup 

 pose, two separate kinds of fish, but are species of one and the same 

 class. The so-called "banded drum" is not a member of this class, 

 but belongs to a totally distinct family— that of the Corvinm. 



In the months of August and September these "heavy-weights" 

 of the angler's list arrive in swarms, or rather in small companies, 

 off the Je^'rsey shore. The drum is a social fish, and where you find 

 one you are pretty sure of finding others also ; and so it often hap- 

 pens that schools of them are taken in the seine nets cast for menha- 

 den. Such as are caught in this way are ground up for fertilizing 

 purposes ; a great waste of a very good food-fish. 



The black drum is a heavy, compact and solid fish, of great deptn 

 as compared with its length. From the chin depend nearly twenty 

 fleshy cirri The body is covered with a heavy coat of large and 

 ursymmetrical scales, and on the gill-cover are two blunt points 

 Each jaw is well armed with blunt teeth, closely put together and 

 eminently fitted to grind and crunch. There are no teeth upon the 

 tongue A marked feature of this fish is the abundance of fin- 

 power with which it is supplied. First, there are two dorsal fins, 

 very prominent when expanded, and fitting into a groove which ib 

 more developed for the first dorsal. The first dorsal fin is composed 



