188 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 



many of the youno- in time would be drifted into high hititudes. Not 

 a few of these invohmtary travelers, by fall time, might reach the 

 latitude of Woods Hole or near it, and winds blowing shoreward might 

 account for their presence along the coast. We know that the parent 

 fishes live close to the Gulf Stream in southern Florida and masses 

 of gulf weed are frequently drifted on the nearb}^ coast. This was 

 especially the case in the year when young tropical fishes were found 

 in such numbers along the coast. It would be interesting to follow 

 the long voyages of such travelers. 



Here, then, is a field which the Bureau of Fisheries and the labora- 

 tories at the Tortugas and Beaufort might investigate. The towing- 

 net is as necessary a tool for the biologist as the dredge, and surface- 

 collecting, though it may not yield as many new species, will add more 

 to oui- knowledge of the life-histories of man}^ common animals than 

 dredging. While grateful t^or all these agencies, and especially to the 

 United States Fish Commission (now the Bureau of Fisheries), for 

 what has been done, let the past be the presage of a still more active 

 and fruitful future. May American enterprise rival the patriotic 

 efforts of Danish sailing masters and gather materials which shall com- 

 pare with those which Christian Liitken used so well, long ago, in the 

 elucidation of pelagic fishes. As to the special piscifauna of Massa- 

 chusetts, a future task will be to subtract rather than to add. A prob- 

 lem to determine must be what shall be considered as fishes really 

 belonging to the fauna. Certainly inhabitants of the deep seas, which 

 never approach the territorial limits of a state, can not properly be 

 considered as members of the fauna. Such t3^pes as the chimwrids, 

 simenchelyids, synaphobranchids, nemichthyids, saccopharyngids, ale- 

 pocephalids, alepisilurids, chauliodontids, and macrurids are character- 

 istic constituents of the deep-sea or bassalian realm. The involuntary 

 estrays from tropical seas, whose lives are terminated with the increas- 

 ing cold of the fall and winter months, also can not claim to be reckoned 

 as constituents of the fauna. They are representative of a very dis- 

 tinct realm — the Tropicalian. They do, however, furnish very useful 

 hints for the determination of zoogeographical problems. We have 

 the evidence that in times past a few estrays from tropical families 

 have established homes far from those of their kindred. All such 

 problems and considerations, however, must now be left for the future 

 and for other hands. 



