142 
BULLETIN OE THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
The desired knowledge can be accumulated but slowly through the pursuit of oceanographic 
studies and the continual collection of fishes under conditions of accurate record, with especial ref- 
erence to eggs and larvae. The material and the data accumulated at any one time may tell no useful 
story, but when there has been gradually gathered together a great store of materials many of the sev- 
eral elements will be found to fall into series. A patchwork quilt is eventually formed which depicts 
in accurate form and in more or less complete detail the interesting and long-desired story of the migration 
and feeding and breeding habits of one or more species of fish. [Coker, 1920, p. 10-11.] 
In this paper an effort has been made to bring together such facts as have 
been recorded concerning the life histories of the family Scitenidse found on the 
Atlantic coast of the United States. The matter contained in it is fragmentary, 
and the blank spaces in our knowledge of the subject are many and large. As yet 
there has been no systematic attempt on the part of investigators to study the life 
histories of this economically important group of fishes, and such facts as have 
been brought to light form a very imperfect patchwork, which may well be com- 
pared to a picture puzzle in which most of the parts are still missing. 
The greater part of the material upon which the paper is based consists of 
collections and records made by the vessels and stations of the Bureau of Fisheries, 
and the acquisition of most of it was incidental to other work. Especially valuable 
was the work of Lewis Radcliffe on the embryology and development of the sque- 
teague ( Cynoscion regalis), hitherto unpublished, and his copious notes on other 
species contained in the records of the steamer Fish Hawlc and of the Beaufort 
(N. C.) laboratory. The collections of young fishes made during the past nine 
years by the senior author in the fisheries vessels Fish Hawk, Grampus, and Alba- 
tross and in the shrimp-trawling boats at Fernandina, Fla., yielded much material 
of value for the study of growth. Collections made at the Woods Hole (Mass.) 
laboratory were utilized, and many specimens were loaned for study by the National 
Museum. 
The methods used in the study of growth are of two kinds. Wherever possible 
large numbers of young fish taken at different times and places have been measured 
and from the data thus obtained curves of growth have been constructed. When 
the material at hand was inadequate for the application of this method the exam- 
ination and measurement of the scales of the adult fish were made, and in many 
cases scale examination has been used to supplement and confirm the results 
obtained by measurement of the young. 
The general principles of scale examination have been fully set forth by Hjort 
(1919) . The determination of age by means of an examination of the scales is based 
on the fact that many fishes form concentric rings of growth on their scales which are 
believed to be analogous to the annual rings found in dicotyledonous wood. That is, 
the slow growth during the winter causes the formation of a band of narrow rings 
unlike the broader ones of the summer growth. Since the length of a fish is propor- 
tional to the size of its scales, it follows that a microscopical examination of the 
latter with measurements of their previous sizes (as indicated by the winter bands) 
will give, by simple proportion, the length of the fish during any winter. As age 
increases it becomes progressively more difficult to interpret the markings on the 
scales, partly because the growth becomes less each year and the winter rings con- 
sequently become confusingly close, generally at an age of about 6 years. Further 
difficulty is found in connection with cessations of growth due to accident or spawn- 
