128 Big Game Fishes 
fishes), to the genus Lachuolaimus (Cuvier and 
Valenciennes), and is known to science as Lach- 
nolaimus maximus (Walbaum). It is essentially 
a West Indian fish, being more or less common 
at Cuba, Porto Rico, Jamaica, and the various 
islands of the Bahamas, and north to the Bermu- 
das, where, at the mouth of Great Sound, on 
Hogfish Shoal, stands a gigantic facsimile of a 
hogfish in metal, announcing that there, at least, 
the hogfish is sufficiently esteemed to be the 
only game fish in the world to have a monument. 
Key West and the immediate keys, west to 
Loggerhead, is a favorite ground of the fish, 
which for years has been a valuable catch, and 
always found in the wells of the American 
fishing-boats, which generally hailed in the old 
days from Mystic, which provided Cuba with a 
large part of its fish supply. Exactly why the 
Cubans should prefer fish from America when 
the same fish could be taken from their own 
waters, was difficult to understand by laymen; 
but formerly the hogfish was supposed to be 
poisonous and a law prevented its sale. Some 
fishermen informed me that not many years ago 
the Cubans believed that there was so much 
copper in their waters that nearly all the fish 
