The room is too small and too crowded with chairs and 

 work-tables to allow extensive exploratijj , L 6 ' che in- 

 spection can^e quickly made. One wall is occupied by 

 shelves a. ad, t. age copper tanks standing on i.. 1 floor 

 under them,, fhe shelves and the rows of. glass jais, 

 bottles and phials, receive the smaller specimens; others 

 go into the tanks; the skins and the largest specimens 

 are packed in brine barrels which stand without the 

 door. Another side of the room is occupiod by the re- 

 frigerators in which specimens may be kept in good 

 condition for several days. On the table are some of 

 the accessories of field-.work, including compound 

 microscope, dissecting instruments, drawing materials, 

 graduated scales, balances, and note-books. Tanks of 

 alcohol, harpoons, boat hooks, grappling irons, nets, 

 and tall wading boots, hung up to dry, may be thrown 

 in ad libitum, to complete the picture. 



On the floor is stretched a huge specimen of the Land 

 Shark {Eugomplwdus littoralis) just brought in from the 

 "Middle Ground" by the schooner "Caroline." (The 

 advocates of line tackle will be interested to learn that 

 this fish, eight feet and ten inches long, weighing prob- 

 ably three hundred pounds, was taken with an ordinary 

 sea-bass hook with a two-inch shank. The fishermen, 

 when he found his hook taken, pulled up anchor and 

 rowed in his sharpie to the smack, holding his line be- 

 tween his teeth and leading his captive with the greatest 

 ease.) This is by far the largest of the species ever re- 

 corded, the ordinary adult of the species, "Johnny 

 Shurks" as the Noankers call them, seldom are seen more 

 than four feet long and fifteen or twenty pounds in 

 weight. Mr. Blake is mounted on a stool near by, 

 rapidly delineating his outlines. Another of the pirty 

 is takii^ the measurements of a Tarptfm ( Megalops thns- 

 soides)- a rure species, our fourtu specimen from the 

 coast, taken in Captain Rogers' pound at Squjsset, near 

 Woods' Hole, Massachusetts. An exquisitely formed 

 creature it is, every line adapted to quick motion through 

 the water, each fin sheathed in front by a case of over- 

 lapping scales, those of the back and under side of the 

 tail clinging close to the body by a sucker-like prolonga- 

 tion of their last rays, its lower jaw prolonged far beyond 

 the mouth in a point like the sharp bow of a yacht. The 

 scales, glistening like plates of polished silver, present s I 

 smooth, yielding surface as the fish rushes 'hrough th *• 

 water. Well can we believe the accounts of the rapidity 

 of the fish and his enormous leaps out of water as he 

 pursues the dying schools of menhaden and herrings. 

 A third is busy over the stove, boiling and cleaning some 



