338 Big Game Fishes 
fish a long, high dorsal, a ramlike “snout” ex- 
tending beyond the mouth, and a faint idea of 
this fish may be had by the reader who has not 
seen it. My boatman announced it as “pizen,” 
and proposed to kill it on general principles; but 
so rare a foeman, so gallant a contestant, never 
died by my hand unless it was strongly in de- 
mand, and to Long John’s wonderment I cut it 
loose. In the years I spent on the reef I do not 
think my catches of large parrot-fishes would 
number over ten or twelve, and this was the larg- 
est, though I saw a crudely mounted specimen in 
a shop in Key West which must have weighed 
over forty pounds; but such fish are the excep- 
tion, a twenty-five-pound fish being moderately 
rare, the average fish seen around the coral 
heads near in ranging from five to eight pounds. 
I unhesitatingly give the loro a place among the 
hard-fighting game fishes of our tropical and 
semi-tropical waters when taken with proper 
tackle. 
This fish, known as the blue parrot-fish, loro, 
and many local names, is the blue scarus (Scarus 
ceruleus) of science. It has a wide geographical 
range from the coast of South America to Mary- 
land. On the reef the fishermen and boatmen 
