228 Big Game Fishes 
and twenty-five or thirty pounds; but this was 
an estimate. The tarpon is literally a gigantic 
cousin of the herrings, and its ties to the gamy 
ten-pounder, Elofs saurus, and bone-fish, 4lbula 
vulpes, are still closer. It is included in the 
family Elopide, and after many nomenclatural 
vicissitudes is now, according to Dr. Jordan, 
Tarpon atlanticus (Cuvier and Val.), differing 
but little from an East Indian tarpon, Megalops 
cyprinordes. 
In appearance the tarpon is long, slender, and 
thin, or compressed —the typical herring type. 
Its mouth is enormous and strikingly oblique, and 
when open, the gill-covers expanded, showing the 
blood-red gills, as often seen when leaping, it pre- 
sents an extraordinary, grotesque, even cynical 
appearance. The lower jaw is very prominent, 
suggestive of a determination not to be caught; 
the teeth are minute, like velvet or plush (villi- 
form), and the interior of the cavernous mouth is 
hard and difficult to penetrate. The eye of the 
tarpon is large and striking, and its glare has 
more than once given a novice a tremor, as the 
gigantic fish seemed to hang in the air dangerously 
near the boat. The dorsal fin is high but short, 
shaped like a lateen sail, the last ray long and 
