[23] HISTORY OF THE TILE-FISH. 259 



will be seen from this letter,* as Professor Baird believed, that the fish 

 was the Lopholatilus, or Tile-fish — how shrewd a guess he made." 



On receiving the letter from Captain Eich, Professor Baird sent him 

 a telegram and also wrote to him to obtain farther details, which the 

 former supplied in the following replies: 



" Dear Sir : Your telegram is at hand, and I am sorry to say I had 

 all the fish cleaned and put on ice. I expect to sail for Boston early 

 next week, and if I come across any more of them will try to get some 

 and ship to you whole. I could discover no appearance of disease about 

 the inwards of any of them ; the eyes, gills, blood, and liver were as 

 bright as when living. The liver would not float, and had very little, 

 if any, oil in it. What the fishermen call the ' poke,' or pouch (of a 

 hake), was hanging out of the mouths of about one-half of them, and 

 there was no food of any kind except in one, a small dogfish. I did 

 not try the temperature of the water, but the air was very cold and 

 made heavy ice on deck that night. 



" Philadelphia, March 25, 1882." 



" Dear Sir : Yours of the 23d is at hand and noted. We first 

 noticed the dead fish about daylight on the morning of March 15, in 

 latitude 40°, and sailed through them on a west by south course from 

 longitude 70° to 71°. When first seen there were a few redfish with 

 them, but when we lowered the boat there was nothing but the Tile-fish 

 in sight; none of them were alive, but none of them swollen, but they 

 appeared to be coming up all the time. Sometimes there would be only 

 two or three in sight, and at others thirty or forty of them. I have 

 seen fish in the winter at the mouth of rivers in South Carolina that 

 would rise to the surface dead yet bright as these fish were, apparently 

 chilled from striking the cold water, and my theory is that the Tile- 

 fish were killed by the cold water, as 1 found nothing that appeared to 

 be diseased about them. 



" Philadelphia, March 27, 1882." 



Other vessels arriving at this time reported having seen the masses 

 of floating fish, and a few succeeded in obtaining specimens, which were 

 eaten. But, strange to say, with the exception of the one brought in by 

 Captain Rich, none were saved for identification by the captains of the 

 incoming vessels. A writer in the New York Times of March 26, 1882, 

 gives the following account of an interview with the captain of the bark 

 Elizabeth Ostle, one of the few vessels which secured specimens of the 

 Lopholatilus : 



" Going on board of the bark Elizabeth Ostle, Capt. O. Lamb, just 

 from Calcutta, now moored in Brooklyn, near the Wall-street ferry, the 



* The letter written by Professor Baird to Mr. Blackford March 24, 1882, quoted 

 above. 



