1885. ] A Brief Biography of the Halibut. 963 
favorite food seems to be haddock and cusk. He has seen eight 
or ten pounds of haddock and cod taken out of one of them. — 
When they are on the shoals they are sometimes filled with flat 
fish, haddock, cusk, sculpin and herring, but when in deep water 
he has found very little food in them. They eat crabs and other 
crustaceans, but shells are rarely found in their stomachs, except 
those of clams and mussels. 
Captain Hurlbert tells me that when the vessels are dressing 
` codfish on the Grand banks, and the backbones and head are 
thrown overboard, these are frequently found in the stomachs of 
halibut taken in the same locality. 
Mr. William H. Wonson, of Gloucester, has seen live lobsters 
six inches long taken from the stomach of a halibut. Captain 
Mar states that they feed on whiting, mackerel and herring. 
He remarks: “Halibut will drive off any kind of fish and take 
charge of the ground.” 
At the meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, in 
1852, Dr. W. O. Ayres stated that he had seen a block of wood, a 
cubic foot in dimensions, taken from the stomach of a halibut, 
where it had apparently lain for a long time. Capt. George A. 
Johnson found an accordeon key in one of them. Olafson, in 
1831, studying them on the coast of Greenland, found not only 
pieces of iron and wood in their stomachs, but in one indi- 
vidual a large piece of floe ice. Captain Collins has observed 
that they often kill their prey by blows of the tail, a fact which is 
very novel and interesting. He described to me an incident 
which occurred on a voyage home from Sable island in 1877: 
“The man at the wheel sang out that he saw a halibut flapping 
its tail about a quarter of a mile off our starboard quarter. I 
looked through the spy-glass and his statement was soon verified 
by the second appearance of the tail. We hove out our dory and 
two men went in her, taking with them a pair of gaff-hooks. 
They soon returned bringing not only the halibut, which was a 
fine one of about seventy pounds weight, but a small codfish 
which it had been trying to kill by striking it with its tail. The 
codfish was quite exhausted by the repeated blows, and did not 
attempt to escape after its enemy had been captured. The hali- 
but was so completely engaged in the pursuit of the codfish that 
it paid no attention to the dory, and was easily captured.” 
The observations of the halibut fishermen are full of interest 
VOL. XIX.—NO. X. 63 
