228 Big Game Fishes 



and twenty-five or thirty pounds ; but this was 

 an estimate. The tarpon is literally a gigantic 

 cousin of the herrings, and its ties to the gamy 

 ten-pounder, Elops saurus, and bone-fish, Albula 

 vulpes, are still closer. It is included in the 

 family Elopidae, and after many nomenclatural 

 vicissitudes is now, according to Dr. Jordan, 

 Tarpon atlanticus (Cuvier and Val.), differing 

 but little from an East Indian tarpon, Megalops 

 cyprinoides. 



In appearance the tarpon is long, slender, and 

 thin, or compressed the typical herring type. 

 Its mouth is enormous and strikingly oblique, and 

 when open, the gill-covers expanded, showing the 

 blood-red gills, as often seen when leaping, it pre- 

 sents an extraordinary, grotesque, even cynical 

 appearance. The lower jaw is very prominent, 

 suggestive of a determination not to be caught ; 

 the teeth are minute, like velvet or plush (villi- 

 form), and the interior of the cavernous mouth is 

 hard and difficult to penetrate. The eye of the 

 tarpon is large and striking, and its glare has 

 more than once given a novice a tremor, as the 

 gigantic fish seemed to hang in the air dangerously 

 near the boat. The dorsal fin is high but short, 

 shaped like a lateen sail, the last ray long and 



