SCOMBEROIDEiE. 81 



Dr. Mitchill describes S 1 . grex as about ten inches long, having the back marked with 

 meandering lines of pale and dark green, the green becoming lighter and less mottled towards the 

 lateral line : the rest of the surface exhibits changeable tints like a pigeon's neck, or variegated 

 copper ore. This species occasionally visits the coast of New York in the autumn, as was 

 memorably the case in 1781 and 1813, when the bays, creeks, and coves were literally alive 

 with them, and the markets overloaded. 



The same author says, the S. vernalis is a very elegant fish, sixteen or seventeen inches 

 long and three deep. Its back is marked transversely by deep-blue curved parallel bands 

 reaching below the lateral line. The intervening spaces are of a paler blue and reddish - 

 brown. The head is bluish with dark spots and shades of green intermixed. The belly is 

 silvery-white and iridescent, and all the hues are beautifully changeable. This fish is caught 

 off the New Jersey capes with the hook, and is brought abundantly to the New York market. 



Pelamys sarda and Cybium maculatum, also belonging to the first tribe of 

 Scomberoideee, frequent the coasts of the United States as high as Massachusetts *, 

 but we have no account of their ranging northwards to the British possessions on 

 that side of the Atlantic. Pennant gives Xiphias gladius a place among the 

 American fish, in his Arctic Zoology, for no better reason than because it exists 

 in most other seas ; and Cuvier, though he has traced it from the Baltic through 

 the North Sea, and the whole European and African Atlantic, and also in the 

 Mediterranean, never saw an American specimen. 



Of the second tribe of this family, Naucrates Noveboracensis, as the name 

 implies, has been taken on the New York coast. It is most probably, according to 

 the Histoire des Poissons, the same species with the N. ductor of the Mediter- 

 ranean and the Tropical Atlantic. Gasterosteus Canadus of Linneeus, which 

 Cuvier refers to his Elecate Atlantica f (a South American fish that is supposed 

 to range to the Guinea coast), was sent to Linnaeus from Carolina, and not from 

 Canada, as its appellation would lead us to suppose. It exists, however, as far 

 north as New York, having been described and figured under the name of Cen- 

 tronotus spinosus, or Crab-eater, by Dr. Mitchill, in the New York Transactions 

 (i., p. 149, pi. 3, f. 9). Three species of Trachinotus are also found on the coasts 

 of the United States, viz., T. fuscus, argenteus, and pampanus, which also range 

 southwards to the Caribbean Sea and Sea of Brazil. 



* Lieutenant-Colonel H. Smith informs me that Tunnies, most probably belonging to the first of these species, are 

 taken off Cape Cod, and the latter of the two is enumerated among the fish of Massachusetts, by Dr. J. V. C. Smith. 

 Cuvier received specimens of both from New York. 



| Elecate Americana. Rig. An., ii., p. 203. 



M 



