HALIBUT, FLAT-FISH AND FLOUNDER. 317 
The Plaice feed upon small fish, shrimps, crabs, and hermit crabs, 
squid, small species of shell-bearing mollusks, and certain radiates, such 
as sand-dollars. They are frequently seen at the surface, rapidly swim- 
ming, and even jumping out of the water, in pursuit of schools of sand-eels 
and sand-smelts. They also feed upon dead fish thrown out from the 
fish-houses. Little is known of their breeding habits. All the large 
females observed in July and August, 1874, upon the Connecticut coast 
contained spawn, but it was, evidently, far from maturity. The Fish Com- 
mission has obtained no very small specimens ; in fact, none less than 
eight or nine inches in length, though the fishermen speak of capturing 
six-inch individuals. Their average length is from sixteen to thirty inches, 
and the weight about two and a half pounds, though it is not unusual to 
take individuals weighing seven or eight pounds. At Noank about eighty 
fish are ordinarily packed in a barrel, weighing from 160 to 175 pounds. 
The largest ever brought to Noank weighed twenty-six pounds. Others, 
of whose capture I have known, weighed twenty, seventeen and a half, 
and fifteen pounds. In Florida and at Provincetown I have seen them 
three feet in length. A one-pound fish measures about fifteen inches; a 
‘one and a quarter pound fish, sixteen or seventeen ; a two-pound fish, seven- 
teen or eighteen; a three-pound fish, about twenty; a four-pound fish, 
about twenty-two ; an eight-pound fish, about twenty-seven, and a ten- 
pound fish, about thirty inches. These proportions are taken from notes 
relating to a large number weighed and measured at Noank, Conn. The 
Winter Flounder or Flat Fish spawns in late winter and early spring near 
the shore, and it is possible that the Plaice breeds at about the same 
period. 
The most extensive fishery for the Plaice is in the waters of Southern 
New England. Favorite fishing grounds are on sandy bottoms, at a depth 
of ten to twenty fathoms, along the Atlantic side of Block Island, Martha’s 
Vineyard, and Eastern Long Island, where they are most plentiful. They 
are obtained in smaller numbers in the harbors and bays along the south 
shore of New England, on Skagwam and Middle Ground Reefs, in Fisher’s 
Island Sound and Long Island Sound, and outside of Fisher’s Island. 
They are also taken in considerable numbers in the pounds of this region, 
occasionally five or six hundred at a time. The quantity taken in the 
weirs of New England in 1876 was estimated as follows: 
