FLYING FISHES AND THEIR HABITS. oOo 



small fishos. The fishes aiv, in fad, almost omnivorous, as may bd 

 uiult'istood from the means of capture used by professional fislier- 

 men and anglers. 



III. 



Their procreative eharacteristies are very little known. Accounts 

 are eontradictoi'v, but it may be because there is a difference in this 

 respect between different species or even different shoals. Mathew 

 {187o) was "inclined to fancy'' that they spawned ""in mid-ocean," 

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

 the nearest land, and tlies(> minute specimens when 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 observed numbers of an un- 

 identified species make " their appearance 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 mass 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 Avanted " could be taken Avith 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 authoi- of an article on " flying fish catching in Barbados," con- 

 tributed to (liambers's Journal (1894), claims that there is " no doubt 

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

 [ = Sargassum] bacciferum,' or Gulf-Aveed, 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 

 fry 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 Oulf-weed on the beach and seen masses 

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

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

 narioid mouse-fish {Pterophryne histrio), and the young fry may 

 have been misidentified. 



o Mr. F. A. Lucas writes to me that " in regard to the flying fish, Exncoctus, my 

 experience at the Chinc-ha Islands was similar to that of Mr. Saunders e.xcept 

 that I did not find tliem so al)undant. I saw thcni in tlie water and caught 

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



