The Leaping Tuna 53 



pooned for the oil, Captain Atwood states that 

 "the average size is about eight feet in length." 

 According to Goode, the fish attains the weight 

 of twelve or fifteen hundred pounds; Cetti, the 

 Italian naturalist, gives its maximum weight as 

 fifteen hundred pounds. Dr. Storer describes 

 one weighing one thousand pounds, which was 

 fifteen feet in length, harpooned at Cape Ann in 

 1858; and Captain Webb in 1878 killed thirty 

 in Gloucester harbor, which averaged one thou- 

 sand pounds each. Dr. G. Brown Goode records 

 one weighing three hundred pounds, which was 

 harpooned at Minot's Ledge, August 16, 1856; 

 another, nine feet long, weighing six hundred 

 pounds, taken at Marblehead in the same year. 

 In 1856 a horse-mackerel was taken off the town 

 of Lynn, Massachusetts, which weighed one thou- 

 sand pounds, was ten feet in length, and six in 

 girth. It was harpooned and killed by three men 

 in a dory, and the specimen was secured and pre- 

 sented to the Lynn Natural History Society by 

 Dr. Joseph B. Holder, its president, father of the 

 author. This was the first tuna ever seen in a 

 scientific institution in America. In July of this 

 year Dr. Holder reported another fish, nine feet 

 in length, and a third, taken at Nahant, almost 



