THE SQUETEAGUES. 
league, which were so plentiful that they could be taken by the boat-load. 
Butin 1816, when I first went into a fishing boat, they had disappeared* 
and I did not see a single specimen for many years. Since that time, 
however, they have commenced returning in considerable numbers.” The 
pioneer of this return came to Provincetown June 23, 1847. Capt. At¬ 
wood’s prediction of their abundant return has not yet been verified. 
Their movements further south have been no less eccentric; and this 
species illustrates in a very forcible manner the axiom of the ichthyologist, 
that the movements of the oceanic fishes are the effect of laws, as yet but 
little understood, upon which the feeble efforts of man have no appreci¬ 
able effect. Col. Theodore Lyman has written : “This fish is highly in¬ 
teresting as one of those which has appeared and disappeared alternately 
on our coast. In 1803 it was abundant in Rhode Island, and very plenty 
at Provincetown as late as 1820. In 1832 it deserted Vineyard Sound (and 
the northern part of the Cape even before that), * * * and now 
(1872) for five or six years it has grown abundant, apparently increasing 
as the bluefish decreased, until this season when the weirs have taken 
hundreds at a haul.” Capt. Atwood tells me that in 1845 he noticed 
them in New York, when the weekly supply would not have exceeded one 
thousand pounds, while thirty years later he found them coming in by the 
ton. Mr. David T. Church wrote in 1871 : “ Scup have disappeared 
from Narragansett Bay, but Squeteague have taken their place, and where 
ten years ago there were millions of scup, now there are almost none, but 
millions of Squeteague. Hundreds of acres could be seen any clear day 
between Point Judith and Providence.” 
There has been a curious relation between the periodical variations in 
the abundance of bluefish and Squeteague, the latter having been most 
numerous when bluefish were least so, but no one fully understands its 
cause. The habits of the two species are very similar ; their times of 
coming and going, and probably their favorite water temperature, nearly 
identical. They feed in the same manner and upon the same animals, 
and the bluefish being the swiftest swimmer and the most voracious feeder, 
its presence in large numbers possibly interferes with the food supply of 
the Squeteague. It is not impossible that, though both species much pre¬ 
fer menhaden, the bluefish may frequently vary its diet by feeding on its 
weaker comrade. 
Some inexplicable cause had a similar influence upon the bluefish,, 
8 
