94 FISH—CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
questioned, as late as 1826, by such well-informed authors as 
Sir John Richardson and MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes.* 
Storer’s “Report on the Ichthyology and Herpetology of 
Massachusetts,” published in 1839, was the first American fau- 
nal list, since Catesby’s, in which the swordfish 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 fish- 
ermen claim occasionally to have taken them with a seine. 
Captain Daniel O’Brien, of the schooner Ossipee, took five 
swordfish 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 Lewisior 
Gloucester, killed a swordfish off Cape Smoke, near Sidney, 
Cape Breton.+ 
Mr. |]. Matthew Jones, of Halifax, N:°S., writes) in 1577 -)- ae 
swordfish is by no means common On our coast, and only makes 
* Richardson remarks, ‘*The habits of the Scomberoidee are quite in accordance with 
their great powers of natation. We found among them many fish that pass their lives remote 
from the land in the middle districts of the ocean, and the family may be termed Aelagz7 with 
as much propriety as some of the preceding ones have been named after the countries where 
they most abound. The bonitos and dolphins, or Coryphene especially, roam about the 
tropics, pursuing schools of various kinds of flying fish. There is a greater number of species 
that cross the Atlantic belonging to this family than to any preceding one. Among these are 
‘Scomber grix, Pelaniys sarda, Trichiurus lepturus Hlacate atlantica, Lichia glaucus, Caraux 
carangus, and Nonens mauritiz, Several not only traverse the Atlantic from side to side, but 
also range through other seas: thus Thymus pelamys and Sariola cosmopolita are known on 
both sides of the Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean. Azwzxzs vulgaris, which is common to the 
Mediterranean and Carribbean Seas, also extends to the Indian Archipelago, if the Zaso of 
New Guinea be the same species. Vomer Brownz visits both sides of the Atlantic, and also 
the sea of Peru. Many of the species mentioned above as traversing the Atlantic exists also 
in the Mediterranean ; and there are several others which have an extensive range in the lat- 
ter sea and through the whole eastern side of the Atlantic, though they do not cross to Amer- 
ica, such as Scomber tcombrus, Lepidopus argyreus, Oiphias gladius, and Uanciates dactor. 
* * * Xiphias gladius is enumerated by Dr. Smith, in his list of the fish of Massachusetts ’ 
but as he has included several other European species in his list on very insufficient grounds, 
further evidence is required of its being an American fish.’’ (Richardson, Fauna Boreali- 
Americani, p. 78.) 
+ Capt. R. H. Hulbert. 
