480 Percomorphi 
of fishes. It appeals as scarcely any other can to our love of 
beauty, when we look upon it, as shown in Kilbourn’s well- 
known painting, darting like an arrow just shot from the bow, 
its burnished sides, silver flecked with gold, thrown into bold 
telief by the cool green background of the rippled sea; the 
transparent grays, opalescent whites, and glossy blacks of its 
trembling fins enhance the metallic splendor of its body, until 
it seems to rival the most brilliant of tropical birds. Kilbourn 
made copies of his large painting on the pearly linings of sea- 
shells and produced some wonderful effects by allowing the 
natural luster of the mother-of-pearl to show through his trans- 
parent pigments and simulate the brilliancy of the life-inspired 
hues of the quivering, darting sea-sprite, whose charms even 
his potent brush could not properly depict. 
“It is a lover of the sun, a fish of tropical nature, which 
comes to us only in midsummer, and which disappears with 
the approach of cold, to some region not yet explored by ich- 
thyologists. It is doubtless very familiar in winter to the 
inhabitants of some region adjacent to the waters of the Carib- 
bean or the tropical Atlantic, but until this place shall have 
been discovered it is more satisfactory to suppose that with 
the bluefish and the mackerel it inhabits that hypothetical 
winter resort to which we send the migratory fishes whose 
habits we do not understand—the middle strata of the ocean, 
the floating beds of Sargassum, which drift hither and thither 
under the alternate promptings of the Gulf-stream currents 
and the winter winds.” 
The Spanish mackerel swims at the surface in moderate 
schools and is caught in abundance from Cape May south- 
ward. Its white flesh is most delicious, when properly grilled, 
and Spanish mackerel, like pampano, should be cooked in 
no other way. 
A very similar species, Scomberomorus sierra, occurs on the 
west coast of Mexico. For some reason it is little valued as 
food by the Mexicans. In California, the Monterey Spanish 
mackerel (Scomberomorus concolor) is equally excellent as a 
food-fish. This fish lacks the spots characteristic of most 
of its relatives. It was first found in the Bay of Monterey, 
especially at Santa Cruz and Soquel, in abundance in the autumn 
