NATURAL HISTORY OF IMPORTANT FOOD-FISHES. 241 



dity of fishes is so great that any ordinary influences acting upon them 

 will exercise no particular eit'ect, but that while the capture of fish, in 

 ordinary seasons, by the usual human agencies, will be of comparatively 

 little account, any disturbance of such fish, while on their spawning- 

 grounds, must have some influence, however slight. This will be exhi- 

 l3ited not only in the number of breeding-fish actuallj^ destroyed before 

 their reproductive function can be accomplished, but in the breaking up 

 of the schools, and thus keeping them from suitable spawning-grounds, 

 causing them to waste the spawn in the waters, where, for one cause or 

 another, a proper combination of the sexes cannot be effected, or where 

 the eggs do not find a suitable nidus for development 5 or, again, where 

 the young fish cannot be properly protected from the destructive agen- 

 cies surrounding them. If, now, in addition to these influences, which 

 would act perhaps very slowly and almost unappreciably for a great 

 number of years, we introduce a new disturbance, in the form of im- 

 mense numbers of the most voracious fish on record, which, from its 

 earliest age to its maximum development is in the habit of destroying 

 it« own weight or more in fisli every day, we can easily imagine what an 

 effect must be produced. 



As far as I can learn, there is no i^arallel in point of destructiveness 

 to the blue-fish among the marine species on our coast, whatever may 

 be the case among some of the carnivorous fish of the South American 

 waters. The blue-fish has been well likened to an animated chopping- 

 machine, the business of which is to cut to pieces and otherwise destroy 

 as nmny fish as possible in a given space of time. All writers are unan- 

 imous in regard to the destructiveness of the blue-fish. Going in large 

 schools, in pursuit of fish not much inferior to themselves in size, they 

 move along like a pack of hungry wolves, destroying everything before 

 them. Their trail is marked by fragments of fish and by the stain of 

 blood in the sea, as, where the fish is too large to be swallowed entire, 

 the hinder portion will be bitten off and the anterior part allowed to 

 float away or sink. It is even maintained, with great earnestness, that 

 such is the gluttony of the fish, that when the stomach becomes full, 

 the contents are disgorged, and then again filled. It is certain that it 

 kills many more fish than it requires for its own support. 



The youngest fisb, equally with the older, perform this function of 

 destruction, and although they occasionally devour crabs, worms, &c.} 

 the bulk of their sustenance throughout the greater part of the year is 

 derived from other fish. Kothing is more common than to find a small 

 blue-fish of 6 or 8 inches in length, under a school of minnows or of 

 making continual dashes and captures among them. The stomachs of 

 the blue-fish of all sizes, with rare exceptions, are found loaded with 

 the other fish, sometimes to the number of thirty or forty, either entire 

 or in fragments. 



As already referred to, it must also be borne in mind that it is not 

 merely the small fry that are thus devoured, and which it is expected 

 will fall a prey to other animals, but that the food of the blue-fish con- 

 sists very largely' of individuals which have already passed a large per- 

 centage of the chances against their attaining maturity, many of them, 

 indeed, having arrived at the period of spawning. To make the case 

 more clear, let us realize for a moment the numbers of blue-fish that 

 exist on our coast in the summer season. As far as I can ascertain by the 

 statistics obtained at the fishing-stations on the New England coast, as 

 also from the records of the New York markets, kindly furnished by 

 Middleton & Carman, of the Fulton Market, the capture of blue fish, 

 from Ne\v Jersey to Monomoy, during the season, amounts to not less 

 S. Mis. 61 16 



