COBIA, MOON-FISH AND FLASHER. 145 
only taken singly with a hook. It lives on the coast of Carolina late ir. 
May, and is occasionally captured until September, when it is no longer 
seen in our waters. It is exceedingly voracious, and destroys many 
smaller fish, which make its ordinary food, though it does not reject 
crustaceous animals.’’ 
Mitchill dissected a specimen caught in New York Bay obtained by 
him in the city market in June, 1815. He found its stomach dis- 
tended with food of various sorts, including twenty spotted sand-crabs 
and several young flounders. DeKay tells us that the specimen from 
which his description was taken was captured in a seine in the harbor of 
Boston and placed in a car with other fish. It was soon discovered that 
it had destroyed and eaten every fish in the car. These fish were chiefly 
sculpins and porgies. Mr. S. C. Clarke, speaking of the fish fauna of 
Florida, remarks: ‘‘ This fish I have never seen except in the Indian 
River, where it is a common species, lying under the mangrove bushes in 
wait for prey like a pike, which it much resembles in form and in the long 
under jaw full of sharp teeth.’’ The size is from two to three feet. It 
attains the length of five feet and the weight of fifteen or twenty pounds. 
The Cobia breeds in the Chesapeake Bay, where in 1880 Mr. R. E. 
Earll succeeded in artificially fertilizing the eggs. Dr. Mitchill speaks of 
its availability as a food-fish in the highest terms. 
It is occasionally taken by trolling lines in the Gulf, and seems to be 
regarded with favor by the anglers who have made its acquaintance. Mr. 
W. C. Prime, whose charming book, ‘‘I Go a Fishing,’’ has become one 
of the classics of Waltonian literature, writes : 
‘¢In shape he may be roughly likened to the great northern pike, with 
a similar head, flattened on the forehead. Heisdark green on the back, 
growing lighter on the sides, but the distinguishing characteristic is a 
broad, dark collar over the neck, from which two black stripes or straps, 
parting on the shoulders, extend, one on each side, to the tail. He looks 
as if harnessed with a pair of traces, and his behavior on a fly-rod is that 
of awiid horse. The first one that I struck, in the brackish water of 
Hillsborough River at Tampa, gave me a hitherto unknown sensation. 
The tremendous rush was not unfamiliar, but when the fierce fellow took 
the top of the water and went along lashing it with his tail, swift as a 
bullet, then descended, and with a short, sharp, electric shock left the 
line to come home free, I was for an instant confounded. It was all over 
in ten seconds. Nearly every fish that I struck after this behaved in the 
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