THE SPANISH MACKEREL AND THE CEROES. 
1 9 S 
posing them to be a species of horse-mackerel ( Orcynus ), which they 
understood had no value as a food-fish. Since no purchasers could be 
found for them, they were finally thrown away. Farther south few have 
been taken, owing to the lack of suitable apparatus, as well as to the fact 
that the fishermen seldom fish beyond the inlets. The smack fishermen of 
Charleston catch a few on troll-lines during the pleasant weather of the 
spring and early summer, but they fish only occasionally in this way. 
“Though the fishing is at present limited to certain localities, there is 
no reason to believe that the fish are absent from other places ; on the 
contrary, it seems probable that, should proper apparatus be employed, 
the species could be taken at almost any point along the outer shore 
where the menhaden are abundant.” 
C. R. Moore, of Johnsontown, Va., wrote in 1874: “Spanish Mack¬ 
erel come in September and October and stay until frost. They are most 
numerous about the mouth of the York River, where a large number are 
caught in seines and salted. They bring about $40 a barrel.” 
There is no reason to believe that the present fishery will affect the 
future abundance of the species; for the catch is necessarily insignificant 
when the immense number of individuals in our waters is taken into 
account. There is no doubt that there have been important fluctuations 
in abundance in the past, and natural causes are certain, cause a like 
variation in the future. 
It is particularly important therefore, that the experiments which the 
U. S. Fish Commission has already made upon the artificial propagation 
of this species shall be as soon as possible brought to some practical 
outcome. 
The Spanish Mackerel of New England was a fish with spotted sides. 
The people of New England found a spotted mackerel and called it by 
the old familiar name ; the people of the Middle States did likewise with 
a different kind of spotted mackerel. In like manner the names herring, 
alewife, shad, salmon, trout, perch, chub, and bass are applied to several 
different kinds of fish in different parts of the United States. There is 
only one clew to the manner in which the Spanish Mackerel of England 
was named. Rondeletius, who wrote in 1554, a book on marine fishes, 
“ Libri de Piscibus Marinis,” speaks of this fish as occasionally occurring 
on the coast of France, but particularly abundant in Spain. 
How did our Spanish Mackerel get its name ? English colonists, the 
world over, have always given to the native animals of the new continent, 
the names of those with which they were familiar in their ancestral home. 
