The Leaping Tuna 53 
pooned for the oil, Captain Atwood states that 
“the average size is about eight feet in length.” 
According to Goode, the fish attains the weight 
of twelve or fifteen hundred pounds; Cetti, the 
Italian naturalist, gives its maximum weight as 
fifteen hundred pounds. Dr. Storer describes 
one weighing one thousand pounds, which was 
fifteen feet in length, harpooned at Cape Ann in 
1858; and Captain Webb in 1878 killed thirty 
in Gloucester harbor, which averaged one thou- 
sand pounds each. Dr. G. Brown Goode records 
one weighing three hundred pounds, which was 
harpooned at Minot’s Ledge, August 16, 1856; 
another, nine feet long, weighing six hundred 
pounds, taken at Marblehead in the same year. 
In 1856 a horse-mackerel was taken off the town 
of Lynn, Massachusetts, which weighed one thou- 
sand pounds, was ten feet in length, and six in 
girth. It was harpooned and killed by three men 
in a dory, and the specimen was secured and pre- 
sented to the Lynn Natural History Society by 
Dr. Joseph B. Holder, its president, father of the 
author. This was the first tuna ever seen in a 
scientific institution in America. In July of this 
year Dr. Holder reported another fish, nine feet 
in length, and a third, taken at Nahant, almost 
