THE MULLETS. 
371 
after hatching. It is also likely that their manner of spawning and feed¬ 
ing is the same everywhere. My own observations have been chiefly 
made in Pensacola and Choctowhatchee Bays and Santa Rosa Sound, 
which take in fifty miles of coast line. In this section, which I have called 
the Pensacola region, there is a spring ‘ run ’ of Mullet composed of 
various sizes of young which are m part, no doubt, of the previous year’s 
hatching. The first school of this run appears on the coast in April or in 
the first part of May, and they continue to come for two or three weeks, 
when they are all inside and scattered about the bay shores. These fish 
are very thin on their arrival, but rapidly fatten and grow on the feeding 
grounds. Some of these contain spawn at first, and in some it is developed 
during the summer. 
“ In September and October there is a £ run ’ of large fish, which comes, 
as usual from the eastward, the fish swimming at the surface of the 
water and making considerable commotion. Some years there is but one 
large school in the ‘ run ’ and at others many small schools, and it is 
thought that the fish are more abundant when they come in the latter 
form. At Chotawhatchee Inlet, when the spawning grounds are near by, 
the fish come in with the flood tide and go out again with the ebb tide ; 
and at the Pensacola Inlet, when the spawning grounds are far away, they 
come into the bay and stay until the operation of spawning is over. The 
spawn in this fall ‘ run ’ is fully developed, and is deposited in October 
and November. The spawning grounds are in fresh or brackish water at the 
heads of bayous, in rivers or heads of bays. The many bayous of Choc- 
tawhatchee Bay are almost blocked up with spawning Mullet in October, 
and they are very abundant at the head of Pensacola Bay near the mouths 
of fresh-water rivers at that time. Although I have been in the bayous 
when Mullet were supposed to be spawning, I have not witnessed the 
operation, nor seen any person who has. In such places the bottom is 
grassy, sandy, and muddy, the water varying with the tide from fresh to 
brackish, and of a temperature varying from 70° to 75 0 F. It is sup¬ 
posed that the spawn is deposited upon the bottom. If they have been 
spawning at the times when I have been present, I would say that the 
operation was a general one. That they do spawn at or near these places 
is quite certain, for they go to them with spawn and come away without 
it, and the young fry first appear near the same places. Crabs and alli¬ 
gators are abundant in such places, and they doubtless destroy many 
