CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME. 127 
into two parts, both parts with the front elevated as in the dorsals. The 
first anal is about three times as high as the second, which is a little in 
front of the second dorsal. The sword is not sharp edged but rounded, 
and the point of the lower jaw reaches nearly half of the distance from 
the eye to the tip of the sword. The body is crossed by narrow light 
stripes extending down from the back. 
The marln-spike fish reaches a length of 12 feet or more. The 
largest one recorded by the Tuna Club taken under their specifications 
of light tackle weighed 340 pounds. It is now known only from Japan 
and the California coast, though this range will doubtless be extended 
when other localities are known. 
Much controversy is carried on among anglers as to whether this fish 
may or may not be called a swordfish. It would appear that the catch- 
ing of anything that bears the name of swordfish carries with it more 
elory than the catching of a marlin-spike fish; though I believe it is 
conceded that the latter is the greater fighter. If that be true why 
not let it stand on its own merits? The name marlin-spike sword fish 
being too long and somewhat ambiguous in that the sword is twice 
referred to, the angler has left off a very descriptive part of it and calls 
it the marlin swordfish, though marlin without the spike obviously 
means nothing at all in this connection. Ag this fish belongs to the 
same genus as the Atlantic spearfish it would be consistent to call it the 
Pacific spearfish. However there are, unfortunately, no rules or laws 
governing the use of common names so there is no reason why this fish 
should not be called a swordfish if it is sufficiently distinguished from 
the fish that has the best right to the name. 
On acount of anatomical differences the swordfish is placed in one 
family and the marlin-spike fishes, the spearfishes, and the sailfishes in 
another, thus indicating that the last three are more closely related to 
each other than they are to the swordfishes. The angler apparently 
objects to placing this fish in a family separate from the swordfish chiefly 
because it seems to rob him of his right to eall it a swordfish. But con- 
sidering groups higher than families they are all grouped together in a 
superfamily—marlin-spike, sail, and swordfishes—and spoken of as 
‘‘the swordfishes.’’ That is a zoological license for considering the 
marlin-spike fish a swordfish. 
On the southern California coast there is a little fish that has the 
lower jaw prolonged into a sword. It does not exceed a length of 
seven or eight inches, and is often called the little swordfish. And that 
is an equivocal license for calling the marlin-spike fish a swordfish, for 
the little swordfish is not at all related to the big one. 
THE SWORDFISHES. 
(Family Xiphude.) 
In this family is the swordfish, cosmopolitan in its distribution. 
Only one species is now recognized. But these large fishes have not 
been very carefully studied owing to the lack of carefully made and 
accurate descriptions, and to the “impossibility of preserving fishes of 
such size. It is not improbable that future study will reveal more than 
one species. Teeth are present only in the young. The ventral fins 
