REVIEW OF LOCAL FISHES 79 



This fish is perhaps the swiftest that swims the seas. A thousand miles 

 of azure sea before it, a thousand miles of azure sea behind, it slips 

 through the water swift and deadly as a brilliant colored knife; and any 

 flying fish in its path slow in gaining the air, promptly changes from 

 incentive to motive power. 



The Dolphin is elongate in form tapering gradually from the should- 

 er to the tail. A long rather high fin composed entirely of slender flexible 

 spines runs the entire length of the back, and adult males have a very 

 high, thin vertical forehead. It is one of the most brilliantly colored and 

 changeable fishes; vivid blues and yellows run across the sides of a 

 living example like the shadows of clouds. It grows very large, often 

 reaching a length of five or six feet. It associates in small schools which 

 prey almost exclusively on the flying fish, and is frequently caught from 

 deep-water sailing ships on a hook set in a piece of wood over which a 

 white rag is draped. This lure is l^arely allowed to touch the water and 

 then jerked into the air again, and doubtless simulates a flying fish to the 

 eye of the Dolphin below. Sailors say that the flesh is sometimes poison- 

 ous and should be cooked with a piece of bright silver. If the silver stays 

 bright, that particular fish can be eaten. Considerable confusion seems 

 to have existed for a long time in regard to the word dolphin which is 

 used almost exclusively for porpoises except among deep sea sailors, 

 where it is applied only to this fish. The figures of dolphins on the old 

 Greek coins are of the porpoise, and the dolphin of heraldry was a com- 

 bination of these two unlike marine creatures, often with tusks indicative 

 of the porpoise's resemblance to a pig, but with the long spiny fin on the 

 back characteristic of the fish. Very small Dolphins hide in drifting weed 

 or about floating wreckage and have a mottled white and yellow con- 

 cealing color. 



The Rudderfish is a small or medium sized species found off-shore 

 about drifting logs or other wreckage. It is blackish in color with a 

 rather small mouth and the head very blunt and rounded in front. As 

 in the Crab-eater, the spiny dorsal fin consists of short stout isolated 

 spines, six or eight of these being present. Dolphin and Rudderfish are 

 both rare stragglers to this vicinity in late summer and fall. Related 

 species are the Harvest Fish and the Butterfish, small, silvery, with 

 small mouths and no ventral fins. The dorsal and anal fins are rather 

 long and almost identical in size and form. In the Harvest Fish the 

 dorsal and anal fins have pointed, excerted, anterior lobes, and the body 

 is so deep as to be almost circular in outline. The Harvest Fish is occa- 



