COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SCOMBROID FISHES. 
455 
Islands. These immature fishes are very slender, have faint longitudinal colour 
bands on the sides and the sooty belly. These fishes are most probably year¬ 
lings, hatched late in spring of the preceding year. 
Bonitos are sensitive fishes, being frightened away when the water 
is stained with blood, when a fellow fish is struggling furiously in a 
net, or when a fellow fish makes a narrow escape from a net or a 
hook. Therefore shark-fishing with a long line, in the fishing ground 
of the bonito is considered in several districts to be harmful to bonito- 
fishing, as the death-combat of sharks is generally accompanied with 
blood-shed, which scares the bonito away. Long lines for the bonito are also 
believed to be injurious from a similar cause. Drift net fishing for bonitos 
and tunnies is also hated by the bonito-fishermen, as well as the circle-net 
fishing for these fishes. Bonitos are very active and powerful, but they are 
not tenacious of life and can not withstand unfavourable conditions long. 
Thus when caught in a drift net or a drift long line they very soon succumb. 
In this point bonitos seem to differ very much from tunnies. 
Bonitos are very good swimmers, their velocity being roughly estimated 
to be more than 25 miles an hour. They migrate in shoals in search of food, 
and do not stop at any particular spot for a long time, though they often remain 
for a while round shallow banks in a warm clear water, as several kinds of 
small fishes are always found in such places. 
Bonito-fishing is carried on at the Pacific coast of our empire, in Hokkaido 
in the north, as an important industry. On the west coast of Kyushyu and in 
the waters round the Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan this fishery also thrives. 
Bonitos are chiefly caught with rods and lines, alluring a shoal of fish with live 
baits thrown from the boat, as the net-fishing is not suitable, owing to the 
clearness of the water. Long lines are sometimes used. The snood is 3-4 m 
in length and the distance between two consecutive snoods is about 8 m. 
These lines are slender and not very strong. 
Bones of this fish are found in the remains of shell-mounds in the north¬ 
eastern pail of Hondo. In the “ Yengishiki,” a classical work on ceremonies 
in the imperial court, etc., compiled in 927, many kinds of food prepared from 
the bonito are enumerated, and these articles were given as tribute to the go¬ 
vernment and the imperial court. In an article in “ Tsurezuregusa,” a well- 
