January, 1921 
FOREST AND STREAM 
21 
Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History. 
The angler, a sluggish fish with large head and an enormous mouth 
quently washed ashore, or that they are 
so hard as to resist the inroads of the 
weather and remain for a long time, the 
bleached skulls of sea robins are among 
the most frequent skeletal remains one 
finds. The entire head of a sea robin, 
it will be remembered, is hard and bony, 
so that the skull is a rather broad, 
rough, flat-topped piece. It so happens 
that there is a simple skull character 
whereby the two common species can be 
differentiated. In the Carolina sea robin 
(Prionotus carolinus) , there is a narrow 
channel-like groove across the head be- 
hind the eye, which is lacking in the 
striped sea robin ( Prionotus evolans 
strigatus) . 
W HEN the north-west winds of ap- 
proaching autumn, blowing from 
the land, flatten down the sea so 
that the surf breaks short and abruptly 
close to shore, members of some little 
school of butterfish (Poronotus triacan- 
thus) , which are swimming close in 
are at times washed out on the sand, 
where they lie until able to escape into 
the wash of the succeeding wave, their 
broad flat sides gleaming brilliant silver. 
One can scarcely take a walk on the 
sea beach at any season without en- 
countering the rectangular, flat, leath- 
ery, dark-colored egg-pouches of skates, 
with long, straight prongs extending 
forward and backward from the four 
corners. Such egg-pouches are usually 
of the common or of the big skate and 
are smaller or larger in size according- 
ly. Children call them “shark eggs,” 
which is an error. In other parts of the 
world there are sharks which lay some- 
what similar leathery eggs, that of the 
European dogfish being quite like a 
skate’s but with the prongs curled and 
tendril-like instead of straight. The 
sharks which breed on our shore, how- 
ever, bring forth their young alive. 
By far the commonest skates’ eggs on 
Long Island are those of the common 
skate and big skate. They are very 
similar in appearance except for size. 
That of the common skate is about one 
inch and a half in length, not counting 
the prongs, that of the big skate two 
and one-quarter inches. In both cases 
the length is about cne and one-half 
times the breadth. The prongs, at one 
end, are gently curved inward, and 
about equal to the length of the pouch, 
at the other end longer and straighter. 
The color is slightly different, though 
variable, usually coal black in the 
smaller species and blackish brown in 
the larger. Last Columbus day an egg 
of the barn-door skate ( Raja stabulifo- 
ris) was found on Long Beach, a very 
large species which occurs in our waters 
during the winter months. It is possible 
that the clear-nosed skate, which is here 
in summer, may also breed locally and 
its eggs will sometimes be found. Both 
these species have eggs broader in pro- 
portion with much shorter prongs. The 
egg of the clear-nosed skate is not very 
different in size from that of the small 
common skate and shiny black in color. 
That of the barn-door skate is decidedly 
larger and usually paler, browner, than 
the egg of the big skate. 
A N object which frequently attracts 
popular interest and finds its way 
to some museum as a curiosity is 
one of the throat bones of the big sea 
drum ( Pogonias cromis) , which bears 
numerous broad, hard flat-topped paved 
molar teeth. These are useful to the 
drum when alive in cracking the shells 
of mollusks and it is said even to be 
destructive to the oyster. 
Herring gull footprints 
So much for the more easily identified 
common objects. In the fall life in the 
ocean lags behind the changing climate 
of the land, and it is pre-eminently at 
this season that fishes which straggle 
northward from the tropics, perhaps 
wafted by the agency of the Gulf 
Stream, invade our shore. One October 
day a rather heavy surf was driving 
ashore on Long Beach before strong 
southerly winds. Bits of flying foam 
rolled up the beach about our ankles. 
My companion suddenly stooped and 
picked up a small butterfly fish ( Chae - 
todon ocellatus) , a little over an inch 
long, which had literally been blown out 
of the sea. The butterfly fish is common 
about tropical coral reefs but only a 
rare straggler so far north. 
D URING the winter months there is 
constant companionship along the 
ocean in the disorganized drifting 
flocks of gulls. Little is washed up by 
the surf which escapes their keen scru- 
tiny, — from a gastronomic viewpoint. 
Such fishes (which came ashore yester- 
day or the day before) only are found 
as have escaped their censorship. 
Theirs are the tracks most plentiful on 
the beach, and which will sometimes aid 
in locating a skate or other fish buried 
under the sand, only a fin or a square 
inch or so of its body showing. 
The track of a gull walking flat- 
footed in soft moist sand which takes 
the full impress of its webbed foot, is 
squarish oblong, the mark of the middle 
toe crossing diagonally from one cor- 
ner to the other, and pointed decidedly 
inward. On hard sand or when run- 
ning on its toes, frequently the claws 
only leave a mark. 
What other of nature’s children pos- 
sesses. that epitome of poise which is 
the birth-right of the sea gull? He 
wheels tirelessly in the sky, sea and 
shore stretched in panorama below, or 
wings his way on and on indefinitely 
low over the surface of the sea. In due 
course the changing tides will bring 
schools of surface fish within range of 
his keen vision, strew titbits along the 
beach, or raise long bars above the 
water where he may dabble in the shal- 
lows or stand dreamily gazing into the 
wind, surrounded by others of his kind. 
Perhaps scores or hundreds will gather 
from near and far, making a great 
cloud when they wheel upward. But 
though a gregarious bird, each gull is 
sufficient unto himself, content to circle 
alone in the vast solitude above, to 
rest as a single white spot in a waste 
of waves, or stand a lone sentinel on 
the beach. The loon is a better swim- 
mer, the shore-birds run about more 
easily; on the wing, the mother-careys- 
chicken and the man-of-war-hawk are 
more tireless and the duck is swifter. 
But the talents of the gull are so bal- 
anced that whether on the shore on the 
water, or in the air, he is perfectly at 
home, with leisure to watch an easy and 
sufficient (though not over-bountiful) 
livelihood drift his way. 
We would not wish him to be a use- 
ful, industrious bird like the wild duck, 
which flies at great speed in a straight 
line to where it is going, or sifts food 
out of the mud with its flat bill at a 
great rate, so as to become fat and tasty. 
