The Drum 313 
So dreaded are these fishes by oystermen that 
the owners of beds have adopted many methods 
to frighten them, one being to anchor highly 
colored cloths over the beds, which move up and 
down with the waves; others, according to Ernest 
Ingersoll, drop pieces of tin on the beds, in the 
hope that the flashes and gleams of light will 
drive them off. At such times the drums are 
often found in vast schools, each fish weigh- 
ing from forty to sixty pounds, and possessed 
of an extraordinary appetite for oysters in the 
shell. Such a devastating horde was caught 
in a school in Great Egg Harbor nine years ago, 
in a seine; the fish numbered two hundred and 
eighteen, and weighed nearly nine thousand 
pounds. A City Island oysterman reported to 
Mr. Ernest Ingersoll that drums had mulcted 
him to the extent of $10,000 in a single 
season. Similar stories come from almost every 
locality where the fish is found. 
The fish spawn in the latter part of March, in 
April and May, in different parts of Florida, those 
farther south spawning first. Thus down near 
Cape Florida the fish spawn in March. Upon 
the upper Florida and Alabama coast and along- 
shore, according to Silas Stearns, they spawn in 
