THE CAROLINA POMPANO. 
THE POMPANOES. 
«* Lightly and brightly they glide and go 
The hungry and keen on the top are leaping 
The lazy and fat on the depths are sleeping.”’ 
Wiriiam Mackwortu Praep, The Red Fisherman. 
HE Pompano, with its pleasing contour, its banner-like fins, and its 
scales glistening with the brilliancy of polished silver and gold, is 
one of the loveliest of our summer visitors. It is not an angler’sfish, nor is 
it a food-fish of importance from the commercial stand-point, yet it is con- 
fessedly the king of table-fishes, commanding almost fabulous prices in the 
markets of our great cities, and esteemed more highly than salmon or bass, 
moon-fish or Spanish mackerel. It figures in angling literature as ‘‘ the 
wood-cock of the seas’’—-wherefore, the writer is unable to say. 
The genus Zrachynotus, to which our Pompanoes belong, is widely dis- 
tributed through the warmer parts of the Atlantic and Indo-Atlantic 
regions. Three species are peculiar to Asiatic waters, three have been 
found only on our own Pacific coast, one is limited to the waters of 
western Africa, one to those of the Caribbean, while of the four which are 
abundant on the Atlantic coast of North America, one ranges the wide 
world over, occurring in warm waters everywhere, one is found on the 
California coast, and one in Africa. The genus is entirely unknown in 
the waters of Europe. The species of the Pacific coast, 7rachynotus 
