swept in by chance in the seine, through 
the meshes of which it could have 
passed readily enough. It had a skinny 
flap on the end of its long lower jaw, 
and keeled scales at the base of its 
tail fin, like a miniature crevally. Very 
young fishes sometimes are peculiarly dif- 
ferent from their elders, or for that mat- 
ter from any of their relatives or proba- 
ble ancestors. , 
J ‘ 1 
A S the breeze died to a zephyr and 
the sun dipped to the horizon, we 
were glad enough to climb back 
aboard ship, lying near where “Resolute” 
and “Shamrock” were to swing at their 
moorings a week later. It gave us much 
pleasure to admire the scientific way in 
which the learned Director fried the suc- 
culent Leiostomus xanthurus, some speci- 
mens of which had refused to survive 
brief discomforts entailed by a trip from 
net to well of the “Seahorse”, and 
stretched between blankets to listen to 
the song of an occasional belated mos- 
quito trail off into oblivion, and dream 
of wondrous fishes to be encountered in 
next morning’s visit to the fish-traps, 
among the myriads of silvery menhaden 
piled waist deep about the fishermen. 
NOTES ON THE SNAPPER . 
O N June 7th, 1919, some men in my 
employ said that a big turtle, “his 
head as big as two fists, came out 
of the lake and made a hole up there 
about 9 o’clock in the morning, and laid 
eggs in it.” 
They showed me the hole; it was sixty 
yards from the water up in a dry, open 
hayfield. The soil was gravelly sand. 
The hole was 2*4 by 3*4 inches across 
the entrance and 6 inches deep. At the 
widest part it was 4*4 inches across and 
rounded; that is, it was bottle shaped. 
The topmost eggs were three inches be- 
low the surface. There were 23 eggs. 
Each egg was 25 mm. in diameter, per- 
fectly round, of a dull creamy pink. They 
were in three layers and tightly packed 
in sand. How do the little ones get out 
when they hatch? 
Next day I saw a ten-pound snapper 
scratching on some loose earth about 40 
yards from the lake. I suspected that 
it was a laying female, so chopped her 
head off and later dissected her. I found 
inside 39 eggs ready for laying, each egg 
being 28 mm. in diameter. Also a large 
mass of ovae as big as No. 6 shot, evi- 
dently the eggs for next season; they 
numbered apparently hundreds. 
I left the body of the turtle where the 
hens could pick at it, though it was three 
days old, the weather warm. The result 
was an epidemic of ptomaine poisoning 
which resulted in the death of three hens 
and the temporary illness of a dozen. 
A similar experience some years ago 
robbed me of five wood ducks, my whole 
stock. Ernest Thompson Seton. 
SNAPPING TURTLE EGGS 
I N the July number of Forest and 
Stream, 1920, is an article on page 379 
referring to Snapping Turtle’s eggs. 
Please let me tell you about these. In 
May last year along about the first, a 
Photograph by E. T. Seton. 
Snapper nest and eggs June 7, 1919 
large Snapping Turtle laid 23 eggs in 
Mr. Bickford’s garden right on the edge 
of a meadow brook. They were screened 
over and watched through the summer 
and in September, along in the middle of 
the month, I dug them up and put them 
in a dish of dirt and in a few days they 
began to hatch. All the eggs were good 
but one; about three days completed the 
hatching. I wintered the young turtles 
and just the other day I let them go. 
Geo. L. Noyes, Norway, Me. 
LADYFISH, BONEFISH OR 
TEN-POUNDER 
By Dr. James A. Henshall 
T HERE are two fishes, allied to the 
herrings, and belonging to different 
families, that co-exist on the sandy 
shores of all warm seas of the three con- 
tinents. They have received a number 
of vernacular names in various localities, 
but to the ichthyologist they are Albula 
vulpes and Elops saurus. 
Albula vulpes was first described by 
Marcgrave in his “History of Brazil”, 
1648, as Unbarana, from Brazil. Later 
it was described by Catesby in his “His- 
tory of the Carolinas”, 1737, as Albula 
Bahamensis, from the Bahamas, and 
known locally as “Bone-fish.” 
Elops saurus was first described and 
named by Linnaeus, in 1766, from speci- 
mens sent to him from South Carolina by 
Dr. Garden. Captain William Dampier, 
an early hydrographer, explorer and buc- 
caneer, in his “Voyage Round the World”, 
1697, mentioned it as “Ten-pounder”, and 
“Bony-fish”, from the Bahamas. 
Jordan & Evermann in “Fishes of 
North and Middle America”, 1896, enu- 
merate the following vernacular names 
for Albula vulpes: Lady-fish; Bone-fish; 
Macabi; Sanducha; Banana-fish. Dr. G. 
Brown Goode, in “American Fishes”, 
1888, says of Albula vulpes, “With us it 
is usually called Ladyfish, in the Ber- 
mudas, Bonefish and Grubber.” 
Jordan & Evermann, in the work just 
quoted, give the following vernacular 
names for Elops saurus: Ten-pounder; 
John Mariggle; Bony-fish; Big-eyed Her- 
ring; Metajuelo Real; Chiro; Lisa Fran- 
cesa. 
From the foregoing account it appears 
that, while the scientific nomenclature of 
the two fishes concerned is clearly and 
well-established, there is much confusion 
regarding their common names, or at 
least to those inhabiting the Atlantic or 
Gulf of Mexico. On the score of priority, 
however, it is evident that the name 
“Bone-fish” was first applied to Albula 
vulpes from the Bahamas by Catesby. It 
(continued on page 519) 
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 
Blowfish inflated with air to twice its natural size. 
