196 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



Mr. William H. Wonson, of Gloucester, has seen live lobsters six inches long taken from the 

 stomach of a Halibut. Captain Marsh states that they feed on whiting, mackerel, and herring. 

 He remarks : " Halibut will drive off any kind of fish and take charge of the ground." 



At the meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, in 1862, Dr. W. O. Ayres stated that 

 he had seen a block of wood, a cubic foot in dimensions, taken from the stomach of a Halibut, where 

 it had apparently lain for a long time. Capt. George A. Johnson found an accordion key in one of 

 them. Olafson, in 1831, studying them on the coast of Greenland, found not only pieces of iron and 

 wood in them, but in the stomach of one individual a large piece of floe ice. Captain Collins 

 has observed that they often kill their prey by blows of the tail, a fact which is quite novel and 

 interesting. He described to me an instance which occurred on a voyage home from Sable Island 

 in 1877 : " The man at the wheel sang out that he saw a Halibut flapping- its tail about a quarter 

 of a mile off our starboard quarter. I looked through the spy-glass, and his statement was soon 

 verified by the second appearance of the tail. We hove out a dory, and two men went in her, 

 taking with them a pair of gaff-hooks. They soon returned bringing not only the Halibut, which 

 was a fine one, of about seventy pounds' weight, but a small codfish which it had been trying to 

 kill by striking it with its tail. The codfish was quite exhausted by the repeated blows, and did 

 not attempt to escape after his enemy had been captured. The Halibut was so completely engaged 

 in the pursuit of the codfish that it paid no attention to the dory, and was easily captured." 



The Halibut, in its turn, is the prey of seals, of the white whale, and of the various large 

 sharks, especially the ground shark, or sleeping shark, in the stomachs of which they have some- 

 times been found; their sides, 1 am told by Captain Collins, are often deeply scarred, probably by 

 the teeth of the sharks, or in their early lives by months of larger individuals of their own kind. 



SPAWNiNa. — There is diversity of opinion regarding their spawning. Some fishermen say that 

 they spawn at Christmas time, in the month of January, when they are on the shoals. Others 

 declare that it is in summer, at the end of June. Capt. George A. Johnson, of the schooner 

 "Augusta H. Johnson," of Gloucester, assures me that Halibut "spawn, just like the human race, 

 at any time of the year." In April, 1878, he was fishing on Quereau Bank, and found large and 

 small Halibut, the large ones full of spawn. In May he was on the Le Have Bank, where he found 

 only small male fish full of milt; in June he was on Le Have again, fishing in shallow water, 

 where he found plenty of "small bull fish, with their pockets full of milt"; in July he was again 

 on Quereau Bank, where he found a school of small and big male and female fish, all, apparently, 

 spawning, or ready to spawn, "with milt and pees soft"; in August he was on the outer part of 

 Sable Island, where he found females full of spawn. 



Captain Ashby, speaking of the Halibut on George's Banks, states that roe is always found in 

 them in May and June. The roes of a large Halibut caught by him in 1848 on the southwest part 

 of George's, and which weighed 356 pounds, after it had been dressed and its head removed, 

 weighed 44 pounds. He states that the Halibut in this region have spawn in them as long as 

 Connecticut vessels continue to catch them, or until September. He has seen eggs in Halibut 

 of twenty pounds' weight, and thinks that they begin to breed at that size. The spawn of the 

 Halibut is a favorite food of the fishermen of Southern New England, though never eaten by those 

 of Cape Ann. 



Captain Hurlbert, of Gloucester, tells me that on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland the 

 halibut school used to come up in shoal water, in forty or fifty fathoms, in summer, and that the 

 spawn was ripest about a fortnight later. In August, 1878, he found many with the spawn already 

 run out. At that time several Gloucester fishermen reported that the Halibut on Le Have and 

 Quereau Banks were full of spawn. Captain Collins told me that in July and August, and up 



