ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 93 
friend, John Renny, that a swordfish sixteen feet long was ex- 
hibited at New York in the year 1791.’* 
DISTRIBUTION OF XIPHIAS GLADIUS IN THE EASTERN ATLANTIC. 
The swordfish is abundant in the Mediterranean} even as far 
east as Constantinople. Aelian 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, except Bloch, whose scepticism is as unreliable as the 
statements of Aelian. Aelian says that this species, with sev- 
eral others, is frequently taken in the Danube at the breaking 
up of the ice in spring. Thisis 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 sum- 
mer in the British waters, even to the Orkneys and the Hebrides. 
They occasionally reach Sweden and Norway, where Linnzus 
observed them, and, according to Lutken, 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 swordfish in the Baltic are mentioned above. 
DISTRIBUTION ON+~THE’ COAST OF; THESUNITED (STARES: 
Allusions have 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 Linnzus, also, to Mit- 
chill’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 
* American Monthly Magazine, ii., 1818, p. 242. 
+ Risso, Cuvier & Valenciennes, Guichenot, etc. 
