Mackerel

MACKEREL (Scomber scombrus), the typical fish of the family Scombridae, which are swift carnivorous pelagic fishes found in tropical and temperate seas, of fusiform shape, gener ally bluish above and silvery below, with small, thin scales, pointed head and rather large mouth, spinous dorsal fin of slen der spines that are depressible in a groove, soft dorsal and anal, followed by a series of detached rays, or finlets, and with slender caudal peduncle and widely forked caudal fin. The flesh is oily, generally red. These are energetic fishes in which the temperature is generally several degrees higher than that of the water.

The albacores, bonitoes and tunnies are large oceanic fishes. Scombromorus and Acanthocybium are important tropical genera, longer and more compressed than other Scombridae, and with strong trenchant teeth. The mackerel genus, Scomber, is dis tinguished by feeble teeth and by the maxillary being sheathed by the praeorbital; it includes about io species from tropical and temperate seas. Scomber scombrus is a valuable food-fish found in the Mediterranean and on both sides of the north Atlantic ; it reaches a length of about IS inches. It swims in large schools, which approach the coasts in the spring; after spawning in the summer they return to the ocean. The principal British fishery is in the western part of the Chan nel. The air-bladder is absent in S. scombrus, but a small one is present in S. colias, termed Span

ish mackerel in England and chub mackerel in America ; this is a smaller and less valuable fish than the common mackerel and more southerly in its distribution, but reaches Britain occasionally. McKIM, CHARLES FOLLEN ( 1_47-1909), American architect, was born in Chester county, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 1847. His father, James Miller McKim (1810-74), a Presbyterian minister, was a prominent abolitionist and one of the founders (1865) of the New York Nation. The son studied at Harvard (1866-67) and at Paris in the Ecole des Beaux Arts (1867-7o).

In

1872 he became an architect in New York city, entering the office of H. H. Richardson. In 1877 he formed a partnership with William Rutherford Mead (b. 1846), the firm becoming in 1879 McKim, Mead & White, when Stanford White (q.v.) 1906) became a partner. McKim was one of the founders of the American Academy in Rome ; received a gold medal at the Paris exposition of 1900; in 1903, for his services in the promotion of architecture, received the King's Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects; and in 1907 became a National Academician. He died at St. James, Long Island, N. Y., Sept. 14 1909. Mc Kim's name is especially associated with the University Club in New York and the Boston Public Library.

See Charles Moore, Life and Times of Charles Follen McKim (1929).