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It happened that Senator Patterson had, some time during the winter, made the acquaintance of a West Indian meteorologist named Poey, who chanced to be spending some time in Washington, and got him mixed up with the officer of engineers. The senator also intimated that the gentleman from Massachusetts had been approached on the subject and was acting under the influence of others.
Walter Rothschild, of Tring, England, for essential facts regarding these species as set forth in his sumptuous work "Extinct Birds". In 1875, when the author visited Cuba and the Isle of Pines, he was informed by Professor Poey that he was "about ten years too late" to find this fine species alive.
Senor Felipe Poey, a famous ichthyologist of Cuba, has recently brought out an exhaustive work upon the fishes of Cuban waters, in which he describes and depicts no fewer than 782 distinct varieties, although he admits some doubts about 105 kinds, concerning which he has yet to get more exact information.
The fish-market of Havana doubtless affords the best variety and quality of this article to be found in any city of the world, not even excepting Madras and Bombay, where the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal enter into rivalry with each other as to their products. The scientist Poey gives a list of six hundred species of fishes indigenous to the shores of Cuba.
There is no inherent improbability, however, in this story regarding the swordfish in Europe, for the same thing is stated by Professor Poey as the result upon the habits of Tetrapturus. The only individual of which we have the exact measurements was taken off Saconnet, Rhode Island, July 23, 1874. This was seven feet seven inches long, weighing one hundred and thirteen pounds.
Professor Poey narrates that both the Cuban species swim at a depth of one hundred fathoms, and they journey in pairs, shaping their course toward the Gulf of Mexico, the females being full of eggs. Only adults are taken. It is not known whence they come, or where they breed, or how the young return. It is not even known whether the adult fish return by the same route.
In 1885, when the National Museum came into possession of one poorly-mounted skin, from Professor Poey, of Havana, it was regarded as a great prize. Most unexpectedly, in 1886 American zoologists were startled by the discovery of a small herd on the Triangle Islands, in the Caribbean Sea, near Yucatan, by Mr.
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