I0o FISH—CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
viewed some of the local fishermen, writes: ‘' The swordfish 
appear on our coast, south of Block Island, about May 25th to 
June 1st. They appear to come from the southwest, or just in- 
side the track of the Gulf Stream. They gradually approach 
the Vineyard Sound and vicinity during June and until July 
toth or 15th, then appear to leave, working to the southeast, and 
are to be found to the southeast of Crab Ledge about the mid- 
dle of July. This school is composed of comparatively small 
fish, averaging about one hundred and fifty pounds gross or 
about one hundred pounds without head and tail, as they are 
delivered in the market. The smallest are four feet long, in- 
cluding the sword, and weigh from thirty to forty pounds; the 
largest eight and a half feet long, with sword, and weighing 
three hundreds pounds gross. These fish are of a light plumb- 
eous hue, darker on the back and white on the bellv. 
“Of late years another school has appeared southeast of Cape 
Cod and George’s Banks about the 1st of August. These fish 
are altogether different, being much larger, weighing from three 
hundred to eight hundred pounds gross, and are entirely black. 
I have this week conversed with an old smackman, M. C. Tripp, 
who has all his life been a fisherman, and has this year (1874) 
captured about ninety fish, and his opinion is that they are not 
the same school. They appear to be of about the same abun- 
dance in average years, the catch depending on weather, fogs, 
etc. They come and leave in a general school, not in close 
schools like other fish, but distributed over the surface of the 
water, the whole being called by the fishermen the ‘annual 
_ school,’ though it cannot be strictly so named.” 
According to Mr. Willard Nye, swordfish appear on the coast 
of Massachusetts from the 8th to the 2oth of June, and are first 
seen southwest of Block Island. They begin to leave in August, 
but stray ones are sometimes seen as late as the last of October. 
The usual explanation of their movement is that they are fol- 
lowing their food—mackerel and menhaden—which swarm our 
waters in the season named, and which are of course driven off 
by the approach of winter and rough weather. 
Capt. R. H. Hurlbert took a very large swordfish on George’s 
Banks, in November, 1875, in a snow-storm. 
