340 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



Another allusion occurs in a communication by l>r. S. L. Mitchill, of New York, to the 

 "American Monthly Magazine": 



"An individual of this species was taken off Sandy HooN . by means of a harpoon, on the 

 19th June, 1817. The next day it was brought to New York inaikct and cut up like halibut and 

 sturgeon for food. The length was about twelve feet, and girth, by estimation, five. . . . The 

 stomach contained seven or eight mackerel. The flesh was remarkably firm; it was purchased at 

 a quarter of a dollar the pound. I tasted a chop of it, broiled, and found it savory and excellent. 

 It resembled the best sturgeon, without its strong and oily flavor. While I ate it I thought of 

 veal cutlet. ... I have been informed by my friend John Renny that a Sword-fish sixteen 

 feet long was exhibited at New York in the year 1791." ' 



DISTRIBUTION IN THE EASTERN ATLANTIC. The Sword-fish is abundant in the Mediterra- 

 nean 2 even as far east as Constantinople, .^Elian said that it was frequent in the Black Sea, 

 entering the Danube. Unfortunately, this is neither confirmed nor contradicted by any later 

 writer whose works I have seen. JSliau says that this species', with several others, is frequently 

 taken in the Danube at the breaking up of the ice in spring. This is so contrary to the known 

 habits of the fish that it throws discredit on the whole story, for the present at least. From the 

 entrance to the Mediterranean they range south to Cape Town. Berthelot saw great numbers of 

 them off the Canaries. They have been frequently noticed on the coasts of Spain and France. 

 They occur sparingly in summer in the British waters, even to the Orkneys and the Hebrides. 

 They occasionally reach Sweden and Norway, where Linnaeus observed them, and, according to 

 Liitken, have been taken on the coast of Finmark. They are known to have occurred in Danish 

 waters and to have found their way into the Baltic, thus gaining a place in the fauna of Russia. 

 A number of instances of the occurrence of Sword-fish in the Baltic have been recorded. 



DISTRIBUTION ON THE COAST OF THE UNITED STATES. Allusion has been made to the 

 early accounts of the Sword-fish on the coast of the United States both in the work of Catesby and 

 the letters of Garden to Ellis and Linnaeus; also, to Mitchill's account of it in 1818. Though it is 

 strange that this very conspicuous species was not recorded more frequently by early American 

 authors, it is still more remarkable that its right to a place in the fauna of the Western Atlantic 

 was either denied or questioned, as late as 1836, by such well-informed authors as Sir John Rich- 

 ardson and MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes. 



Storer's " Report on the Ichthyology and Herpetology of Massachusetts," published in 1839, 

 was the first American faunal list, after Catesby's, in which the Sword-fish was mentioned among 

 the American fish. 



The range of the species on the eastern coast of America can now be defined with some 

 accuracy. Northward and eastward these fish have been seen as far as Cape Breton and Sable 

 Island Banks. 



Captain Rowe states that during a trip to George's Banks he has seen them off Chebucto 

 Head, near Halifax, where the fishermen claim occasionally to have taken them with seines. 



Capt. Daniel O'Brien, of the schooner "Ossipee," took five Sword-fish on his halibut trawl, in 

 two hundred fathoms of water, between La Have and Brown's Banks, in August, 1877. 



Capt. Jerome B. Smith, of the schooner " Hattie Lewis," of Gloucester, killed a Sword-fish off 

 Cape Smoke, near Sidney, Cape Breton. 3 



'American Monthly Magazine, ii, 1818, p. 242. 

 * Rinso, Cuvier and Valenciennes, Gnichenot, etc. 

 'Capt R. H. Bnlbert. 



