112 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 



proximity of the shore, and the bottom is gene- 

 rally muddy and covered with marine plants. 

 It is in these muddy bottoms that the mackarel, 

 directed by their instinct, pass the winter. They 

 plunge their head and the anterior part of their 

 body in the mud, keeping their tails elevated 

 vertically above it. In the spring they emerge, 

 in infinite shoals from their hiding-places, and 

 proceed southward for the purposes of depositing 

 their eggs in more genial seas ; more than half 

 a million of these have been discovered in a 

 single female. 1 These fish die as soon as they 

 are taken out of the water, and then they emit 

 a phosphoric light. The Scomber is one of the 

 fishes, which, according to Pliny, was used for 

 making the celebrated Roman pickle named 

 Garum, and he calls it a fish good for nothing 

 else: if he means our mackarel, it is singular that 

 its value, as an article of food, should not have 

 been discovered. The Gar us or Garum derived 

 its name from a crustaceous animal so called, 

 from which it was sometimes made. Apicius is 

 said by Pliny to have employed the liver of the 

 mullet in concocting it. 



What the mackarel is to the north of Europe, 

 the Thunny is to the south. It deposits its eggs 

 in May and June, when it enters the Mediterra- 

 nean, seeking the shores in shoals arranged in 



1 Scomber Thynnus. 



