508 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



^vben tliey first came into tbe creeks were transparent and about lialf 

 an inch long, but increased rapidly in size toward the end of the season, 

 and in the fall measured four or five inches. 



The parallelism between these facts and those connected with the 

 spawning of the mackerel is very apparent. I regret that I must send 

 this paper to press with the question of the spawning habits of the 

 menhaden in such an unsatisfactory condition. 



4. Menhaden fishing on a Long Island steamer. 



[From advance sheets of an article eutirled "Around the Peconics," by Eun'Est Ixgersoll, in Har- 

 per's New Monthly Magazine for October 1, l»7ri, pp. 719-7-^3. ] 



(Panigraph 174, p. 124.) 



Loitering in comfortable indecision, I was fortunate enough to get an 

 invitation from Captain "Jed" Hawkins to take a fishing cruise in his 

 " bunker " steamer. The start was to be made at earliest dawn — an 

 ungracious hour — and I was glad to leave the hotel in the evening, and 

 avail myself of a sofa in the captain's snug state-room behind the pilot- 

 house, so as to avoid the annoyance of getting up in the middle of the 

 night. It was Sunday, and the little wharf was utterly deserted as I 

 l)icked my way among the rubbish and piles of merchandise down to 

 the steamer. Standing on the high deck, a picture of serene beauty 

 spread before me. The air was perfectly still, the moon just fairly 

 risen, and no sound was to be heard save the ticking of that mighty 

 time-piece the tide, as its wavelets swung gently back and forth under 

 the weedy piers or divided against the sharp prows of the smacks. It 

 was light enough to show the spars and ropes of every craft, and all 

 lay as motionless as though fixed in rock rather than floating in liquid, 

 save the tremulous blue pennons on the topmasts. Then I turned in; 

 and when I emerged, after an hour's pounding on my door (as it seemed) 

 by the chuggety -chugging engines, we were far down Gardiner's Bay. 



Last night the unrufiied water was like bronze ; now, under the soft 

 silvery haze of the morning, the dancing surface became frosted silver, 

 opaque and white save where the early sunbeams, striking through the 

 mist, were reflected from the crests of the ripples in glancing ribbons of 

 light. Shelter Island was an indistinguishable mass far astern ; Long 

 Beach light had ceased to twinkle; Orient Point was hidden in haze; 

 Plumb Island, where eagles used to make their metropolis, and many 

 fish-hawks now live, nesting on the ground with th^ gulls, was only a 

 low bank of blue ; Gull Islands could not be seen at all ; and I only 

 knew that Little Gull with its copper-bolted wall was there from the 

 dot in the horizon made by its lonely light-house, and an occasional 

 gleam imagined to be the surf breaking on the reefs at the Race. All 

 this was northward. Southward the wooded bluffs of Gardiner's Island, 

 with its natural breakwater and light-house, like a long arm reaching 

 out between the outer and the inner waters, limiting the view. But 

 this was soon left behind, and as the deep indentation of Napeague 



