September 9, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



337 



number of fishes recorded up to date is 229 

 marine species, and if to these we add 11 

 fresh-water ones occurring in the vicinity, 

 we have no less than 240. It is remarkable 

 that at so late a day so many species pre- 

 viously unknown to the coast should have 

 been found. Dr. Smith, in his main article, 

 enumerated 23 such species ; in 1899, added 

 16, and in 1900, 4 more. No additional 

 ones have been discovered since — a fact by 

 no means surprising. The additional spe- 

 cies, with one exception, were known es- 

 trays from tropical waters; the exception 

 was supposed to have been previously un- 

 known and was described as Chcetodon 

 bricei. 



If we now first subtract from Goode and 

 Bean's 'Catalogue of the Fishes of Essex 

 County' 24 species which are deep-sea 

 forms not yet found in Massachusetts Bay, 

 we shall have left 36 species which have not 

 been found about Woods Hole. These, 

 added to the 240 actually found there, and 

 5 more from fresh water will give us a 

 total of 281, the number of species now 

 known to have been foiind some time or 

 other along the coast of Massachusetts or 

 in her interior waters. 



IX. 



A specially notable feature in the late 

 enumerations and additions to the fauna 

 of southern Massachusetts is the great num- 

 ber of young tropical fishes and the com- 

 parative or total absence of adults. Six- 

 teen species were added in 1899 to the pis- 

 cine visitors to Woods Hole and four in 

 1900, and of these no less than eighteen 

 were the young of typical tropical forms. 

 In round numbers, about three dozen spe- 

 cies of tropical fishes have been found 

 along the coast, represented only or almost 

 only by the young — often the very young. 

 In olden times, when persons believed, or 

 thought they believed, that all fishes laid 

 eggs at the bottom, it would naturally have 



been inferred that such young must have 

 been hatched close by, and that the parent 

 fishes had spawned in the northern seas. 

 Such an inference, with our present knowl- 

 edge, is quite unjustifiable. We now know 

 that a very large proportion of fishes de- 

 velop pelagic or floating eggs and not de- 

 mersal ones. If such fishes, then, would 

 discharge their ripened ovarian burdens 

 near the surface of the open sea where cur- 

 rents would carry them northward, many 

 of the young in time would be drifted into 

 high latitudes. Not a few of these invol- 

 untary 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 you 

 know that masses of gulf weed are fre- 

 quently drifted on the nearby coast and 

 that such was especially the case in the 

 year when the young tropical fishes were 

 found in such numbers along the coast. It 

 would be interesting to follow the long voy- 

 ages of such travelers. 



Here, then, is a field which the fish com- 

 mission and the laboratories at the Tortugas 

 and Beaufort might investigate. The 

 towing-net is as necessary a tool for the 

 biologist as the dredge, and surface-collect- 

 ing, though it may not yield as many new 

 species, will add more to our knowledge of 

 the life-histories of many common animals 

 than dredging. While grateful for all these 

 agencies, and especially the United States 

 Fish Commission, for what has been done, 

 let the past be the presage of a still more 

 active and fruitful future. May Ameri- 

 can enterprise rival the patriotic efforts of 

 Danish sailing-masters and gather ma- 

 terials which shall compare with those 

 which Christian Liitken used so well, long 

 ago, in the elucidation of pelagic fishes. As 

 to the special Piscifauna of Massachusetts, 

 a future task will be to subtract rather 



