206 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



seem to distribute themselves over a large area, though more or less grouped together iu little 

 bunches. This is particularly noticeable on the shore, when the fish are moving about in search 

 of food, and the fisherman soon catches up all that chance to be on one patch of rocks, and must 

 then row to another in order to find a new supply. The same thing is seen on western banks, where 

 a vessel usually carries dories to distribute her crew over different parts of the grouYid, and often, 

 by setting her trawls in one locality for a day or two, seems to catch up all of the fish, and must 

 then ' shift her berth.' Fishermen also cite many instances where the fishing is excellent on a 

 few particular, well-defined spots on different parts of the ground, while almost no fish can be 

 taken in other places. 



"During the spawning season this tendency to become scattered is less noticeable, for the 

 instincts of the fish seem to bring them nearer together, and great numbers are often taken in one 

 particular locality. Even here, however, the tendency to separate into groups occurs, for some 

 boats find good fishing, while others, but a few rods away, catch almost nothing; and in trawling, 

 some parts of the line have a fish on nearly every hook, while other parts take only a scattering 

 one. 



" In schooling, both sexes are always found together, whether it be on the spawning or feeding 

 ground or on the journey; but the relative numbers of each seem to vary greatly, and we have been 

 able to discover no invariable rule whereby one can predict with certainty the sex that will first 

 appear, or that which will be most abundant at any given time during the season. The fishermen 

 have a commonly accepted tradition that in the spawning schools the females always come first and 

 the males later, but this theory is not supported by facts. Observations were frequently made on 

 the relative numbers of the two sexes landed by the shore-fishermen between September, 1878, and 

 July, 1879. The results showed that during the early fall, or before the school fish had made their 

 appearance, the fish were nearly equally divided between males and females — first the one and then 

 the other being more abundant. When the school fish first reached the shore early in November 

 the males were a trifle more plenty than the females for about a week, but from that date until they 

 left the grounds the females were taken in greater numbers, sometimes in the proportion of two to 

 one, and at others in nearly equal quantities. In the Ipswich Bay school during the first two or 

 three days in February there were ten males to one female; by the middle of the month the females 

 composed about forty per cent, of the catch, and from this date until the 1st of June the males 

 numbered two to one. From reliable fishermen we learned that the same was true of the fish on 

 the off-shore banks, and that, though varying greatly in their relative numbers, both males and 

 females were always present. 



"There Is usually a great difference in the size of the individuals taken by the fishermen on 

 the shore feeding grounds in a single day, for the young and 'ground-tenders' remain on these 

 rocky ledges during th^ entire year, and late iu the season the school fish come in upon the same 

 grounds and are naturally taken with them. 



"But when the school fish visit a locality not frequented by the young, as they do in Ipswich 

 Bay, there is a noticeable absence of immature fish, and the catch is composed almost wholly of 

 individuals of large size. Thus, in the winter of 1878-'79 many trips of from twenty-five to forty 

 thousand pounds were landed with scarcely a small fish among them, while vessels fishing only a 

 few miles distant found young fish plenty, and there were occasional instances where such vessels 

 caught only small ones. Again, tbough the school fish may differ considerably in size, we have 

 not found one, thought to belong to their number, that had not reached maturity. Indications 

 strongly favor the idea that the young remain separate from the school fish during the first few 

 years of their lives, and we are led to believe that, though they are often taken together, the 



