Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/177

Rh M A C M A C 159 as they were. But one who had no conception of distinct character, of human individuality, was not likely to succeed in the drama, which depends more on that than on anything ; and hence it was not our author s good fortune to deliver his country from the stigma of never having produced a genuine tragedy. Of The Spanish Father, The Prince of Tunis, and The Shipivreck, the second was brought on the stage, and managed to live for six nights; the other two were stillborn, and probably no man living- has ever read them, unless for purely critical purposes. But Mackenzie, if nowise a great writer, but quite other wise essentially a small writer, with a knack of making sentences indeed, but having nothing particular of his own to say, was not therefore altogether a useless man in his day. That he did well for himself, and perhaps for the exchequer too, is quite likely, even though he toiled in the high-Tory service of Dundas, and wrote tracts meant to &quot; broom &quot; out of the country the tide of French Revolu tionary notions. At any rate he became in his old age a kind of literary centre and social power in Edinburgh, when that was really needed and useful. He had known John Home and blind Dr Blacklock, and wrote lives of them ; but, what is of more consequence, he was among the first to recognize the genius of Robert Burns, as editor of The Lounger, which he and a group of young men with some literary tastes wrote and printed for some years. Yet, though he once breakfasted with Johnson, and certainly met Burns more than once, he has told us nothing about either of them, though a page of Burns s talk would have been worth all The Man of Feeling twice told. It was so far good, however, that he hailed the peasant poet cordially, which we could hardly have hoped so artificial a writer would do, and even better that he noticed the dawn of German literature when Lessing and Schiller rose above the horizon, and not only wrote some account of them, taken from French sources, but boldly set to the study of German that he might really know them at first hand. How far he went in that study we do not know, only he set young Walter Scott on the scent, with results such as he himself could never have imagined. So he lived on, a kind of small king in the Edinburgh literary world, till 1831, dying in his eighty-sixth year, with a wonderful new world around him, which had not yet begun to criticize, but only to admire and honour him. MACKEREL. Mackerels are pelagic fishes, belonging to a small family, Scombridse, of which the tunny, bonito, albacore, sucking fish (Echeneis), and a few other tropical genera are members (see ICHTHYOLOGY, vol. xii. p. 690). Although the species are fewer in number than in the majority of other families of fishes, they are widely spread and extremely abundant, peopling by countless schools the oceans of the tropical and temperate zones, and approaching the coasts only accidentally, occasionally, or periodically. The mackerels proper (genus Scomber) are readily recog nized by their elegantly shaped, well-proportioned body, shining in iridescent colours. Small, thin, deciduous scales equally cover nearly the entire body. The dorsal fin extends over a great part of the back, and consists of several portions : the anterior, composed of feeble spines which can be laid backwards in a groove ; the posterior, of rays only, of which the five or six hindmost are detached, forming isolated &quot; finlets.&quot; The shape of the anal finis similar to that of the rayed dorsal. The caudal fin is crescent-shaped, strengthened at the base by two short ridges on each side. The mouth is wide, armed above and below with a row of very small, fixed teeth. No other fish shows finer proportions in the shape of its body. Every &quot; line &quot; of its build is designed and eminently adapted for rapid progression through the water; the muscles massed along the vertebral column are enormously developed, especially on the back and the sides of the tail, and impart to the body a certain rigidity which interferes with abruptly sideward motions of the fish. Therefore mackerel generally swim in a straightforward direction, deviating sidewards only when compelled, and rarely turn ing about in the same spot. They are in almost continuous motion, their power of endurance being equal to the rapidity of their motions. Mackerel, like all fishes of this family (with the exception, perhaps, of Echeneis, which has not yet been examined in this respect), have a firm flesh ; that is, the muscles of the several segments are interlaced, and receive a greater supply of blood-vessels and nerves than in other fishes. Therefore the flesh, especially of the larger kinds, is of a red colour ; and the energy of their muscular action causes the temperature of their blood to be several degrees higher than in other fishes. All fishes of the mackerel family are strictly carnivorous ; they unceasingly pursue their prey, which consists princi pally of other fish and pelagic crustaceans. The fry of clupeoids, which likewise swim in schools, are followed by the mackerel until they reach some shallow part of the coast, which their enemies dare not enter. Mackerels are found in almost all tropical and temperate seas, with the exception of the Atlantic shores of temperate South America, where they have not hitherto been met with. The distinctive^ characters of the various species have not yet been fully investigated; and there is much confusion in the discrimination of the species. So much is certain that the European mackerel are of two kinds, of which one, the common mackerel, Scomber scomber, lacks, while the other possesses, an air-bladder. The best-known species of the latter kind is Scomber colias, the &quot; Spanish &quot; mackerel; x a third, Scomber pneumatophorus, is believed bysome ichthyo logists to be identical with S. colias. Be this as it may, we have strong evidence that the Mediterranean is inhabited by other species different from S. scomber and S. colias, and well characterized by their dentition and coloration. Also the species from St Helena is distinct. Of extra- Atlantic species the mackerel of the Japanese seas are the most nearly allied to the European, those of New Zealand and Australia, and still more those of the Indian Ocean, differing in many conspicuous points. Two of these species occur in the British seas : Scomber scomber, which is the most common there as well as in other parts of the North Atlantic, crossing the ocean to America, where it abounds ; and the Spanish mackerel, Scomber colias, which is distinguished by a somewhat different pattern of coloration, the transverse black bands of the common mackerel being in this species narrower, more irregular or partly broken up into spots, while the scales of the pectoral region are larger, and the snout is longer and more pointed. The Spanish mackerel is, as the name implies, a native of the seas of southern Europe, but single individuals or small schools reach fre quently the shores of Great Britain and of the United States. The home of the common mackerel (to which the following re marks refer) is the North Atlantic, from the Canary Islands to the Orkneys, and from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and the coasts of Norway to the United States. Towards the spring large schools approach the coasts. Two causes have been assigned of this migration : first, the instinct of finding a suitable locality for propagating their species ; and, secondly, the search and pursuit of food, which in the warmer season is more abundant in the neighbourhood of land than in the open sea. It is probable that the latter is the true and only cause, for the following reasons : mackerel are known to increase much more rapidly in size while in the neighbourhood of land than in the months during which they lead a roving pelagic life in the open sea ; and, further, one-year and two-year-old fishes, which have not yet attained maturity, and therefore do not travel land- 1 The term Spanish mackerel &quot; is applied to a very different fish in America, viz. , Cybium maculatum.