FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 107 



adversary. Danger and difficulty brace it in its 

 efforts to regain the liberty it so foolishly flung 

 away, and it plays so good a losing game as often 

 to snatch a victory when almost on the beach. Its 

 trick of jumping many times out of the water, 

 which may, of course, be only the result of pain, is 

 alone enough to disconcert a fisherman unused to 

 such displays. Unless on the hook, it does not 

 jump, though I have seen tarpon in their hundreds 

 rolling and wallowing at the surface like great carp 

 in a stew. Nor does this untaught child of the 

 Gulf lack any of the tricks known to trout and 

 salmon : the fit of sulking, the sudden rush, the 

 often fatal ruse of doubling on its tracks, charging 

 towards the boat and then, in a moment, dashing 

 off at an angle, in short, all the tactics that the 

 fisherman might expect from a foe that had known 

 the rules of the game all its life. 



Something was said above of a simple mathe- 

 matical formula for obtaining the approximate 

 weight of a tarpon from its cubic measurement. 

 Obviously such a calculation could be made only 

 from a perfectly symmetrical fish, and would be 

 quite unreliable in the case of the asymmetrical 

 eel or turbot. It is as follows : — 



(extreme length in inches) x (extreme girth in inches)^ 

 ■ 800 



The length is measured from the tip of the 

 snout to the median point of a straight line drawn 

 at right angles through the end of the shorter lobe 

 of the tail. 



Whether this method of reckoning weight from 

 measurement would satisfy the President of the 



