40 THE TARPON 



. . "A RECORD OF YOUNG TARPON 



"So little is known regarding the life history of the 

 tarpon that the following note should be on record. 



"In November, 1920, the Bureau of Fisheries received 

 from Mr. James Mallon of Dauphin Island, Mobile 

 County, Alabama, a young tarpon which was submitted 

 at the instance of Mr. William Holabird. The specimen 

 was 25 cm. in length and from an examination of its 

 scales, which showed no trace of a winter ring, Mr. W. W. 

 Welsh tentatively concluded that it was less than one 

 year old. Further information was furnished by Mr. 

 Mallon through Mr. Holabird in a letter which, slightly 

 edited, is as follows : 



' ' ' The little ones I caught last year were taken some- 

 where about the middle of January. Some of them were 

 6 to 8 inches and were caught on the south side of 

 Dauphin Island in the Gulf of Mexico. I killed them 

 with a stick as they were running along the beach. I 

 killed seven of them, the smallest 6 inches and the big- 

 gest 8 inches long. The one I sent was killed with an 

 oar at the entrance of Dauphin Bay on November 19, 

 1920. As to the age of the fish, it must be a year, as I 

 think.' 



"In his book entitled, "The Tarpon" (1920) Louis L. 

 Babcock has well summarized the available data regard- 

 ing the capture of young individuals of this species. It 

 may be inferred that there is not a previous record of the 

 capture of so small an example of tarpon on the northern 

 shore of the Gulf of Mexico. The smallest specimens of 

 record are those taken by Evermann and others in a shal- 

 low brackish pool in Porto Rico in February, 1899. 



R. E. COKEB, 



U. S. Bureau of Fisheries." 

 I submit that one is safe in concluding that the tarpon breed 

 in many places widely remote, for the facts disclose that very 



