362 Storer on the 
T, saltator. Cuv. The Blue Fish. 
Trans. Lit. et Philosoph. Soc. N. Y. p. 424, et fig. 
Cuv. et Valenc. Hist. Nat. des. Poiss, t. ix. p. 231. 
This species described by Dr. Mitchell as the 
“Scomber plumbeus,” and called the “ horse mack- 
erel” by the vulgar, is better known in those portions . 
of our state where it is taken, as the ‘ blue fish.” 
Many years since it was held in high estimation by 
the aborigines of our country. For about fifty years 
it disappeared from our coast, as may be learned 
from the following passages, extracted from a journal - 
of the first settlement of the island of Nantucket, 
written by Zaccheus Macy, in 1792, and contained 
in the third volume of the “ Massachusetts Historical 
Collections." In this account, notice is taken of a 
great pestilence which attacked the Indians of that 
Island in 1763 and 1764, with such mortality, that 
of the whole number 358, 222 died. He adds: 
“ Before this period, and from the first coming of the 
English to Nantucket, a large fat fish called the 
blue fish, twenty of which would fill a barrel, was 
caught in great plenty all round the island, from the- 
Ist of the 6th till the middle of the 9th month. 
But it is remarkable that in the year 1764, the very 
year in which the sickness ended, they all disap- 
peared, and that none have been taken since." Oc- 
casionally, for the last twenty years, a few straggling 
specimens, very small, have been taken, but they - 
were rarely seen until within the last ten years; 
during this latter period they have gradually in- 
gn 
