10 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
STRIPED MULLET (HUGH CEPHALUS) 
Photograph by Elwin R. Sanborn. 
and are still living. While they feed freely, 
they have not grown as fast as was expected. 
This may be attributable to an insufficiency of 
live food, which cannot be had during the winter 
months and is not always obtainable in summer. 
Seining operations in the same locality during 
the past summer, 1921, yielded larger numbers 
of young pompano and about two hundred more 
were added to our collection. We saw no adult 
pompano, and the Sandy Hook pound-net fish¬ 
ermen say they are rarely taken in their nets. 
The pompano is a common species along 
sandy shores in the South Atlantic and Gulf 
states. The young have been taken as far north 
as Cape Cod in late summer. Young pompano 
brought to the Aquarium many years ago and 
kept in unheated tanks, died in November when 
the temperature fell below 60 degrees. We sus¬ 
pect that most of the tropical species which 
wander up to the latitude of Long Island in 
summer, perhaps assisted by the Gulf Stream, 
never get back to the warm latitudes where they 
belong, but perish on the approach of winter. 
The young pompano in our collection are all 
bright silvery fishes, with none of the yellowish 
tinge of the adults. The pompano is one of the 
very finest food fishes to be found in American 
waters. Its greatest length is twenty inches, 
with a weight of six or seven pounds, but the 
average size is much smaller. 
Visitors are advised to look up the young 
pompano. There are no livelier fishes in the 
Aquarium. 
Hitherto the presence of the striped mullet 
(Mugil ceplialus ) in the Aquarium has been ir¬ 
regular. Careful collecting in local waters may 
show that it is available oftener than we have 
supposed. The young are more numerous than 
the adults and appear earlier. Our seines took 
hundreds of rather small mullet at Sandy Hook, 
mostly in September. Their growth in captivity 
has been surprising. It would not be exaggera¬ 
ting to say that they have increased in size 
fully one-third in three months. The largest 
appear to be nearly a foot in length and all are 
remarkably lively. 
