136 Fisuinc iv AMERICAN WATERS. 
seven hundred and fifty pounds, was nine feet in length, and 
six feet in circumference. The illustration here given is a 
Tur Horse MackerEL.—Genus Thynnus, 
copy of my sketch of the fish made from still life. As Gaspe 
is a great fishing port, the “old salts” would have detected 
this fish as a tunny, had it been one. That it is a great deli- 
cacy for the table is proven by its marketable value, which 
nearly equals, per pound, that of the salmon in the vicinity 
where both fishes are taken. It is stated that this fish attains 
to the weight of two thousand pounds, but it is very rare to 
take one of more than a thousand. This eight-hundred- 
pounder towed the boat to which the line of the harpoon 
was fastened nearly five miles. They are taken, like the 
swordfish, by sailing for them; and when coming on a shoal, 
or even a single one, a well-aimed harpoon is sent into the 
fish where its head unites to the body, and then the towing- 
line is manned carefully, and the fish tows the boat until he 
gets fatigued, and, when in a fainting condition, the lance 
bleeds him in the gills, and he is towed alongside until his 
powerful rigid tail has made its last flap; then he is raised 
into the boat, a subject of wonder to the amateur. I think 
the horse mackerel one of the links in the chain of fishes 
whose head is the tunny, and which rank as follows: Tunny, 
horse mackerel, bonetta, bluefish, Spanish mackerel, cero, 
winding up with the common mackerel, which—as the bar- 
ber said of the baker when asked to shave a coal-heaver— 
“is as low as we go.” 
It will be seen by the conformation of the horse mackerel 
