Ill 



THE TARPON 



(Megalops thrissoides) 



BEFORE dealing with the details of its capture it 

 seems desirable to say something of the little that 

 is known of the tarpon's life-story. When an 

 angling writer sets out to give a brief sketch of 

 the natural history of any better-known form, of 

 the salmon or trout or black bass, he has access to 

 a mass of literature, scientific, descriptive, specula- 

 tive, which he can easily reduce in the light of his 

 own experience to an intelligible precis. Writing 

 of the salmon, he has material in the interesting 

 questions of its colour-blindness, its feeding (or 

 its fasting) in fresh water, and its singular prefer- 

 ence for some rivers over others seemingly as well 

 suited to its needs. The trout and the black bass 

 offer similar points of view, and indeed every fish 

 of importance in the angler's diaries has for genera- 

 tions been the theme of an extensive literature, and 

 experts with rod and pen, from Izaak Walton down 

 to Professor Jordan and Sir Herbert Maxwell, have 

 essayed to unveil the mysteries of its watery life. 



The tarpon is in a different position. It is 

 mysterious and unstudied. Mr C. F. Holder has 

 devoted space to it in his delightful books, and it 

 is the subject of many sporting articles in the 

 American magazines and weeklies, but of literature, 

 in the sense of salmon literature, it has little or 



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