188 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 
many of the young in time would be drifted into high latitudes. Not 
afew of these involuntary travelers, by fall time, might reach the 
latitude of Woods Hole or near it, and winds blowing shoreward might 
account for their presence along the coast. We know that the parent 
fishes live close to the Gulf Stream in southern Florida and masses 
of gulf weed are frequently drifted on the nearby coast. This was 
especially the case in the year when young tropical fishes were found 
in such numbers along the coast. It would be interesting to follow 
the long voyages of such travelers. 
Here, then, is a field which tie Bureau of Fisheries and the labora- 
tories at the Tortugas and Beaufort might investigate. The towing- 
net is as necessary a tool for the biologist as the dredge, and surface- 
collecting, though it may not yield as many new species, will add more 
to our knowledge of the life-histories of many commen animals than 
dredging. While grateful for all these agencies, and especially to the 
Jnited States Fish Commission (now the Bureau of Fisheries), for 
what has been done, let the past be the presage of a still more active 
and fruitful future. May American enterprise rival the patriotic 
efforts of Danish sailing masters and gather materials which shall com- 
pare with those which Christian Liitken used so well, long ago, in the 
elucidation of pelagic fishes. As to the special piscifauna of Massa- 
chusetts, a future task will be to subtract rather than toadd. A prob- 
lem to determine must be what shall be considered as fishes really 
belonging to the fauna. Certatoly inhabitants of the deep seas, which 
never approach the territorial limits of a state, can not properly be 
considered as members of the fauna. Such types as the chimerids, 
simenchelyids, synaphobranchids, nemichthyids, saccopharyngids, ale- 
pocephalids, alepisaurids, chauliodontids, and macrurids are character- 
istic constituents of the deep-sea or bassalian realm. The involuntary 
estrays from tropical seas, whose lives are terminated with the increas- 
ing cold of the fall and winter months, also can not claim to be reckoned 
as constituents of the fauna. They are representative of a very dis- 
tinct realm—the Tropicalian. They do, however, furnish very useful 
hints for the determination of zoogeographical problems. We have 
the evidence that in times past a few estrays from tropical families 
have established homes far from, those of their kindred. All such 
problems and considerations, however, must now be left for the future 
and for other hands. 
