HISTORY OF THE FISHES OF MASSACHUSETTS. 129 



Remarks. This pretty species, which is known as the Scup, Porgee, and Scapaug, is 

 taken in large quantities in Buzzard's Bay and the Vineyard Sound ; and at New Bed- 

 ford, Holmes's Hole, and Gay Head it is one of the most common fishes, and in a fresh 

 state is used more than any other. At Holmes's Hole it is taken from the first of June 

 until the middle of October with the hook ; after that date, in the ponds, with spears and 

 nets. Within a few years, small numbers have appeared north of Cape Cod, and are 

 now yearly captured at Wellfleet and Sandwich. 



In the year 1834 or 1835, Captain William C. Downes, of Holmes's Hole, carried a 

 smack-load of this species from the Vineyard Sound, and threw them overboard in Ply- 

 mouth Harbor. 



Mr. James Newcomb, fishmonger in the Boston Market, informs me that in the year 

 1831 or 1832 a smack-load of scapaugs arrived in Boston Harbor. A portion of them 

 were purchased by subscription among the fishermen in the market, and thrown into the 

 harbor. The next season two specimens were caught from our wharves ; in the summer 

 of 1835, one individual was taken at Nahant, and was considered a very strange fish, no 

 specimen having been known to have been seen there before; in 1836, still another was 

 captured at Nahant. As no specimen had ever been taken so far north before, and as 

 the few taken would lead to the inference that those which had been transplanted from 

 Buzzard's Bay had not bred in the cold waters of this portion of Massachusetts Bay, 

 we are led to believe the individuals taken immediately around Boston were of the num- 

 ber of those originally brought from the South. 



Massachusetts, STOKER. Connecticut, AYRES. New York, MITCHILL, CUVIER, DE- 

 KAY. South Carolina, LINN^US. 



FAMILY V. SCOMBRID^E. 



The fishes of this family have small scales, so that the greater part of the skin appears 

 as if entirely smooth. The ventral fins are destitute of scales ; the opercula are without 

 spines or denticulations ; in most of them the caudal fin is large and powerful, and gen- 

 erally they are furnished with numerous cceca. 



GENUS I. SCOMBER, Cuv. 



Body fusiform, covered by scales which are uniformly small ; sides of the tail not cari- 

 nated, but merely raised into two small cutaneous crests ; dorsal fins widely separated ; 

 some of the posterior rays of the second dorsal and anal free, forming finlets ; one row 

 of small conical teeth in each jaw. 



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