MACKERELS, HORSE-MACKERELS, ALLLED FORMS 141 



lines or in the same nets that serve for the more important 

 fish. 



As to the method of feeding practised by the gar-fish, 

 there is Httle room for doubt on the part of any that have 

 watched them chasing the small fry with extraordinary agility 

 close to the surface. The only difficulty arises from a con- 

 sideration of the recorded instances in which they have been 

 know to thrust their bills into pilchards or even larger fish. 

 There can, however, be little doubt that these attacks were 

 purely accidental, for the bill has been known to break off 

 in a peal or other large fish, and the gar-fish could never 

 conceivably have intended feeding on such prey. It can 

 only be surmised that in its frenzied rushes through the 

 water its longer jaw does occasionally strike some passing 

 fish as large . as, or larger than, the gar-fish itself, probably 

 to the destruction of both fish, the one dying from loss 

 of blood, the other from the accident to its mouth and 

 subsequent starvation, for it is hardly to be expected that 

 a gar-fish deprived of its bill could adapt itself to feeding 

 by suction, as in the case of the maimed bream recorded above. 



When hooked on a light line, the gar-fish displays extra- 

 ordinary activity, leaping out of the water and apparently 

 endeavouring to shake the hook from its jaws. The gar-fish 

 is closely related to the flying fish, which is more appropriately 

 described in the chapter on uncommon fishes, its presence in 

 our seas being so uncommon, indeed, as to have cast grave 

 doubts on its being a genuine British fish. 



The spawning of the gar-fish is interesting, for we find 

 its eggs provided with anchoring filaments that recall in a 

 modified form the tendrils that we noticed in the eggs of two 

 of the sharks. These threads, some of them one centimetre 

 (or \ in.) long, grow all over the surface of the egg, and, 

 as figured by Masterman,* they look as if they were capable 

 of anchoring the eggs not alone to each other, but also to 



* Mcintosh and Masterman, British Marine Food-fishes, p. 401. 



