The Apaches of the Sea 197 



cately flavored oil, makes it one of the very best of food 

 fishes. A single fish would be a good month's wages, yet 

 no fisherman pursues it in any sea, for he would never know 

 where to look for it. It has been taken almost everywhere. 

 It is recorded from England, France, Italy, Maine, Nova 

 Scotia, Massachusetts, Cuba, Honolulu and Japan. In Cal- 

 ifornia it has been taken at San Pedro Point, at Monterey 

 and at Santa Catalina. 



In Hawaii, they call it Loukipala. In England it is the 

 opah, and often it carries a series of other names, moonfish, 

 glance-fish and Jerusalem haddock. The Spaniards call it 

 mariposa, or butterfly, and the Italian fishermen at San 

 Francisco call it San Pedro fish, because they once found 

 a little school of them off San Pedro Point, between San 

 Francisco and Half Moon Bay. 



But whatever its name, it is one of the noblest of fish, rich 

 in flesh, beautiful in color, dignified in habits. 



It constitutes a family all by itself, of a single species. 

 It is remotely, very remotely, related to the mackerels, and 

 its lineage is very ancient, for there is a kind of opah, named 

 Dorypterus, found in the rocks of Devonian times, one 

 of the very earliest of all the bony fish. Dorypterus is 

 even shorter and deeper than Lampris, with a higher fin and 

 a still more lugubrious expression at the down-turned angles 

 of its mouth. Even in Devonian times, such inhabitants as 

 there were were often despondent as to the future of society. 



Most characteristic of all the shore fishes of California 

 are the various species called surf-fish, constituting the 

 family of viviparous perch. Of these fishes there are 

 twenty species, eighteen in California and two in Japan. 

 They are short broad fishes shaped like a sunfish, but the 

 spines weaker, and the anal fin with many more rays. The 

 largest reach a length of eighteen inches, the smallest about 

 five. They feed on small animals, and some of them on 

 plants. Their teeth are small, their mouths narrow. Their 

 scales are large and mostly silvery. Most of the species are 



