342 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



were filled with them as fast as if picked up on dry land, and in 

 the fishing season they were commonly sold at a shilling (eight- 

 pence halfpenny, or about seventeen cents) a bushel. The 

 increase in the size of the Trout was as remarkable as the multi- 

 plication of their numbers.* 



Again, the disappearance of an animal— especially a fish — is 

 not necessarily due to extinction. In 1879 there was captured, 

 off the coast of Massachusetts, a new species of Tile-fish, to 

 which the name of Lopholatilus chamceleonticeps was given. Of 

 this fish large catches were made, and it was expected it would 

 rank among the most important food-fishes of the United States. 

 But after a short interval the Lopholatilus disappeared, and soon 

 good reasons for its absence were discovered. In the months of 

 March and April, 1882, vessels arriving at Philadelphia, New 

 York, and Boston reported having passed large numbers of dead 

 or dying fish scattered over an area of many miles, and from 

 descriptions and the occasional specimens brought in it was 

 evident that the great majority of these were Tile-fish. As one 

 account after another came in it became apparent that a vast 

 destruction of fish had taken place, for vessels reported having 

 sailed for forty, fifty, and sixtj 7 miles through floating fish ; and 

 in one case the schooner ' Navarino ' ploughed for no fewer than 

 one hundred and fifty miles through water dotted as far as the 

 eye could reach with dying fishes. From careful computations 

 made by Capt. Collins, it seemed that an area of 5000 to 7500 

 square statute miles were so thickly covered with dead or dying 

 fish that their bulk " must have exceeded the enormous numbers 

 of one billion." The cause of this sudden and vast mortality has 

 been considered as due to some unusual lowering of temperature 

 in the warm belt of Gulf Stream slope, which brought immediate 

 death to so many of its inhabitants.! The Tile-fish, however, 

 though it has disappeared from its original locality, or the area 

 wherein it was first observed, is not extinct. In 1892, Col. Mar- 

 shall McDonald, the Commissioner of Fisheries, made another 

 attempt to discover the fish, and was successful in finding it at 

 five different stations, so that this Tile-fish is restored to the list 



* Thompson, ' Nat. Hist. Vermont,' p. 142. Cf. Marsh, ' Man and 

 Nature,' p. 115. 



f Cf. Lucas, ' Eept. Nat, Mus.,' Washington, 1891, pp. 648-49. 



