THE SPANISH MACKEREL. 
THE SPANISH MACKEREL AND THE CEROES. 
Sooner shall cats disport in water clear 
And speckled mackrels graze the meadows clear 
Than I forget my shepherds wonted love. 
Gay. Pastorals, 1714. 
Next morn they rose and set up every sail 
The wind was fair, but blew a mackrel gale. 
Dryden. The Hind and the Panther . 1687. 
^ I'HE Spanish Mackerel is surely one of the most graceful of fishes. It 
appeals as scarcely any other can to our love of beauty, when we look 
upon it, as shown in Ivilbourn’s well-known painting, darting like an 
arrow just shot from the bow, its burnished sides, silver flecked with 
gold, thrown into bold relief by the cool green background of the rippled 
sea; the transparent greys, opalescent whites and glossy blacks of its 
trembling fins, enhance the metallic splendor of its body, until it seems to 
rival the most brilliant of tropical birds. Kilbourn made copies of his 
large painting on the pearly linings of sea-shells, and produced some 
wonderful effects by allowing the natural lustre of the mother-of-pearl, to 
show through his transparent pigments and simulate the brilliancy of the 
life-inspired hues of the quivering, darting sea-sprite, whose charms even 
his potent brush could not properly depict. 
It is a lover of the sun, a fish of tropical nature, which comes to us 
only in midsummer, and which disappears with the approach of cold, to 
some region not yet explored by ichthyologists. It is, doubtless very 
familiar in winter to the inhabitants of some region-adjacent to the waters 
of the Caribbean or the tropical Atlantic, but until this place shall have 
been discovered it is more satisfactory to suppose that with the blue-fish 
