COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SCOMBROID FISHES. 
395 
met ■with, but those of Auxis and Gybiurn niphoniura are rather rare. After 
the publication of the paper, I obtained through the kindness of Mr. Genshichi 
Yendo a spear-head, 214 mm long, lacking a barb, carved from a caudal 
fin-ray of a tunny. He collected it from a shell-mound of Miyagi-ken. A 
large caudal vertebra, recently discovered by Mr. Akira Matsumura in a 
shell-mound of Ogido, Ryukyu, belongs most probably to a species of Gym- 
11 osar da. A few vertebrae of Euthynnus yaito were also taken from a shell-mound 
of Iha, Ryukyu, by Prince Kashiwa Öyama. 
In some poems composed in the period of Tempyö-Shöhö (749-756) and 
cited in the “ Manycshyu ”, we learn that the tunny was caught at that time 
with spears as well as by means of hook and line. In the “ Yengishiki”, a 
classical work compiled between 900—927, we find names of several kinds of 
food, prepared from the mackerel and the striped bonito. These products 
were paid as tribute to the Imperial court and the Government from several 
provinces round our coasts. In that classical work, names of tunnies and seer- 
fishes are not mentioned, though tunnies at least were caught before that time. 
From the name of “ sawara ” for our common seerfish, we can guess that they 
have long been known to us, as that name in our old language means narrow 
abdomen, and it is just as old as the name “ saba ” for the mackerel, meaning 
narrow or minute teeth. From the twelfth century on, on account of many 
wars, most industries were disturbed and retrograded, until peace was restored 
by the consolidation of a central government in the seventeenth century, under 
the control of Hideyoshi Toyotomi. From an anecdote, however, we learn 
tliat an ingenius pound-net was planned and constructed in the period of 
wars in a bay near Sendai by a soldier, who got his idea from tactics in war. 
The device is a trap, with an elongated poimd, the longer diameter of which 
is at right angles to the course of the leader. The pound as well as the 
leader have a certain curvature, which prevents the escape of fish at the mouth 
of the pound, and when the mouth is closed, at the bent corners of leaders, 
which are set in different directions. The apparatus first designed for the 
capture of the tunny has recently been employed in many other places for the 
capture of seerfishes, yellow-tails, etc. and it has proved to be superior to other 
types, having the longer diameter of the pound in the same direction as the leader. 
It is really remarkable that a fishing implement invented in the northeastern 
