A RECORD SUN FISH 371 



duction of eels was studied; for it was discovered that young eels were 

 often found in the stomachs of small sunfishes, and from what we now 

 know of the natural history of eels, it seems clear that at one stage of its 

 life the sunfish lives in deep water. 1 Its curious shape therefore may in 

 some way be connected with its living under conditions of great pressure, 

 where most fishes develop huge heads and spindling trunks. 



Small specimens of sunfish are fairly common in the warmer seas. Large 

 specimens however rarely come to the hands of the naturalist, so the present 

 fish has a certain merit since it is apparently the largest of its kind to find 

 its way to a museum. Dr. David Starr Jordan records that a specimen 

 taken in 1893 near Los Angeles, weighed in life 1800 pounds, and measured 

 eight feet two inches from snout to tail. The present specimen was ten 

 feet, one inch in length when caught and nearly eleven feet in vertical 

 measurement. The only record of a larger specimen known to the writer, 

 was given in a popular magazine several years ago where a photograph 

 was reproduced of a sunfish which had been killed by a steamer's propeller 

 blade near the harbor of Sydney. This specimen, it is said, measured ten 

 feet in length and was no less than fourteen feet in vertical measurement. 

 Its weight was 4400 pounds. 



There can be no. question that the present specimen had attained great 

 age, although its age cannot be estimated definitely. By analogy with other 

 fishes it could hardly have been less than twenty years old and it may have 

 been nearly a hundred. It shows an interesting old age character in the 

 wrinkles which appear at many points, as shown in the photograph. These 

 " wrinkles " are thin ridges formed originally from folds of skin whose sides 

 had grown together — so completely in fact, that sections show that the 

 ridge is solid, leaving the inner surface of the skin quite smooth. Thus the 

 " wrinkles " are normal features, not due to defective taxidermy, as one at 

 first suspects. Similar wrinkles appear in the photograph, which was taken 

 of the fish as it was hoisted out of water. The tail of the present specimen 

 had been badly injured, probably by attacks of sharks or of killer- 

 whales, but its outline is to a large degree regenerated. 



1 Since this was written, a paper of Dr. Pellegrin (Bull. Soc. Zool. de France, vol, xxxvii. 

 p. 228) has been received, which indicates that sunfishes collect and spawn (April) in definite 

 areas (banks) in relatively deep water — as in the bay of Port-de-France. The eggs are 

 minute. 



