128 Big Game Fishes 



fishes), to the genus Lachnolaimus (Cuvier and 

 Valenciennes), and is known to science as Lach- 

 nolaimus maximus (Walbaum). It is essentially 

 a West Indian fish, being more or less common 

 at Cuba, Porto Rico, Jamaica, and the various 

 islands of the Bahamas, and north to the Bermu- 

 das, where, at the mouth of Great Sound, on 

 Hogfish Shoal, stands a gigantic facsimile of a 

 hogfish in metal, announcing that there, at least, 

 the hogfish is sufficiently esteemed to be the 

 only game fish in the world to have a monument. 

 Key West and the immediate keys, west to 

 Loggerhead, is a favorite ground of the fish, 

 which for years has been a valuable catch, and 

 always found in the wells of the American 

 fishing-boats, which generally hailed in the old 

 days from Mystic, which provided Cuba with a 

 large part of its fish supply. Exactly why the 

 Cubans should prefer fish from America when 

 the same fish could be taken from their own 

 waters, was difficult to understand by laymen ; 

 but formerly the hogfish was supposed to be 

 poisonous and a law prevented its sale. Some 

 fishermen informed me that not many years ago 

 the Cubans believed that there was so much 

 copper in their waters that nearly all the fish 



