AMERICAN FISHES. 
178 
the Pacific as S. diego. Prof. Jordan considers it to be the S. grex of vari¬ 
ous authors, but writes that he is not yet prepared to accept as final the 
judgment of Steindachner and Vaillant that it is the young of S. colias. 
The lower half of its sides is silvery and without any gray spots, such as 
are conspicuous in S. colias. Jordan has specimens of the unspotted form 
much larger than his smallest specimens of the true S. colias. 
The history of the Chub Mackerel on our coast is a peculiar one. At 
the beginning of the present century it was exceedingly abundant all along 
the coast of New England and New York. Mitchill remarked that 
it “ comes occasionally in prodigious numbers to the coast of New York 
in autumn. This was memorably the case in 1781 and 1813, when the 
bays, creeks and coves were literally alive with them, and the markets 
full of them.” 
DeKay states that in early November, 1828, they were very abundant, 
and many persons were poisoned by eating them. 
Capt. Epes W. Merchant, of Gloucester, a veteran fishing skipper, who 
has been familiar with the fisheries of Massachusetts Bay for the past 
seventy years, told me that the Thimble-eye were so abundant from 1814 
to 1820 that with three men and a boy and a small vessel he could catch 
ten barrels of them, or about three thousand fish, in a day. 
From these testimonies it would appear that between 1840 and 1850 
the species, formerly so abundant, had disappeared along the whole coast 
line. In an essay by the writer, written in the spring of 1879, this sen¬ 
tence occurs : “For ten years past the Smithsonian Institution, with its 
collectors stationed at various points from Halifax to Galveston, has tried 
in vain to secure one of them, and it is probable that no museum in the 
world possesses a species of this fish, once so common.” 
