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534 PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM, 
Mr. A. Howard Clarke, in charge of the Fish Commission station at 
Gloucester, has communicated to Professor Baird some interesting facts 
regarding its abundance. From these statements it would also appear 
that the species has been observed occasionally in past years. He 
writes under date of August 10: “I have received this morning from 
the schooner ‘ Fitz J. Babson’, just arrived from Block Island, a fish 
answering to your description of the Auwzxis, having a corselet of scales 
around the pectoral fin, as in the tunny. The captain of the vessel, 
Joshua Riggs, reports that about a week ago he had a hundred barrels 
in the seine at one time, and saw over twenty schools of them. He saw 
them as far east as Sow-and-Pig Light Ship. They are very easy to catch, 
flip like menhaden, do not rush, and are not frightened at the seine, 
They go in immense numbers; he thinks as many as one thousand bar- 
rels to a school. The day after the appearance of these fish the mack- 
ere] disappeared, but he does not know whether the mackerel were 
driven away by them or not. They feed on mackerel food. Mr. Daniel 
Hiltz, of the same vessel, says that he caught one of just the same kind, 
in February, 1879, on a haddock-trawl on the eastern part of the Middle 
Bank, in forty fathoms of water. He took it to Boston, where it was 
called a young bonito. 
“Mr. John Henderson, of the schooner ‘ Sarah C. Wharf’, says that two 
vessels caught such fish recently eastward of here. The schooner 
‘American Hagle’, of Provincetown, took a number of barrels of them 
into Newport, and sold them for a dollar a barrel. Another Cape Cod 
vessel”—he does not know her name—* took about fifty barrels of them 
and threw them away. All the mackerel-seiners from Block Island 
report seeing quantities of this new fish within the past fortnight. 
The captain of the schooner ‘Sarah C. Wharf? says he first saw them a 
fortnight ago, some fifteen miles off Block Island. The captain and 
several of the crew of the ‘Ella M. Johnson’, of Newburyport, just 
arrived from Block Island, state they saw abundance of the Auzis, but 
did not know what it was until reports came from you at Newport. 
They opened one and found in its stomach the ordinary red-mackerel ° 
food. This crew differ with tle crew of the schooner ‘Fitz J. Babson’, 
with regard to the ease of capturing them; think them rather difficult 
to take; say they flip like porgies, and do not rush like mackerel. They 
saw ten large schools of them on Saturday last, when some fifteen miles 
south of Block Island.” 
I hope that any reader of the American Naturalist who has seen this 
fish will mention it. Some may, perhaps, have an opportunity of study- 
ing its habits. The length of those I have seen ranges from 12 to 16 
inches, and their weight from three-quarters of a pound to a pound and 
a half or more. Those sent to New York market were part of the lot 
taken by the schnooer “American Eagle” and brought into Newport, 
whence they were shipped by Mr. Thompson, a fish-dealer of that place. 
It would require from eighty to one hundred of them to fill a barrel; so 
