18 



This species does not appear to be indigenous north of Cape Cod. 

 Storer gives the following account of its introduction : " 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 that the individuals taken immediately 

 around Boston, were of the number originally brought from the south. 

 In the year 1834 or 1835, Capt. Wm. Downes, of Holmes' Hole, car- 

 ried a smack-load of this species from Vineyard Sound and threw 

 them overboard in Plymouth Harbor." Op. cit., p. 51. Storer, writ- 

 ing in 1867, says, that "within a few years small numbers have ap- 

 peared north of Cape Cod and are yearly captured at Wellfleet and 

 Sandwich." 



Judging from the rare occurrence of the species thus introduced, 

 it can hardly be considered to have become naturalized; the few 

 which have been taken were doubtless summer stragglers. In the 

 Boston Society's Museum is a specimen taken at Swampscott, June 

 29, 1860, by J. Phillips. In the Salem Museum is another taken in 

 Salem harbor, July 23, 1860, by C. A. Putnam. Scup become abun- 

 dant on the south side of Cape Cod, from the fifth to the twelfth of 

 May, which would allow ample time for the appearance of a part of 

 the school off the eastern coast of Massachusetts, as early as the dates 

 recorded. 



Mr. Hinckley, Pres. of Phila., Wilm. & Bait. R. R., informs us that 

 in the winter of 1833 he found a dead scuppaug on the Cohasset shore ; 

 this was its first occurrence in that locality, and none of the fishermen 

 knew it. 



In 1856, Capt. Atwood recorded the Scup as very rare at Province- 

 town. 



Family CENTRAECHID^. 



97. Lepiopomus auritus (Z,tnn.) Eaf. RED-TAILED BREAM. 

 Pomotis appendix Storer, Hist. Fish. Mass., 1867, p. 14, pi. iii, fig. 4. 

 This species occurs in Wenham pond and other bodies of fresh water 

 in Essex County. 



98. Eupomotis aureus (Walb.~) Gill & Jordan. "PUMPKIN 



