196 SCOMBERID.E. 



the same flavour. Another was seen at the same time and 

 place ; but in consequence of the weather being very stormy, 

 they were unable to procure it. In the summer of the pre- 

 sent year, 1839, a specimen was taken in the Dee, the occur- 

 rence being communicated to me by Lord Cole. Mr. John 

 Laing, surgeon, in his Journal of a Voyage in a Whaler 

 from Whitby to Spitzbergen, says that the Opah is not un- 

 common among the Shetland Isles, and this we are prepared 

 to expect when we find MM. Kroyer, Nilsson, and Reinhardt, 

 recording its occurrence among the islands of the Categat. 



This fish was first described by Dr. Mortimer, in the 

 Philosophical Transactions, from a specimen taken at Leith 

 in the year 1750: the preserved fish was exhibited at a 

 meeting of the Royal Society. To his account of it Dr. 

 Mortimer has added " that the Prince of Anamaboo, a coun- 

 try on the west coast of Africa, being then in England, 

 recognized the fish immediately as a species common on that 

 coast, which the natives called Opah, and said it was good 

 to eat." 



Little or nothing is ascertained of the habits of this fish : 

 one exhibited at Dieppe was unknown to the oldest fishermen 

 there. The specimen before referred to as taken at Brix- 

 ham, measured four feet six inches in length, and weighed 

 one hundred and forty pounds. 



By the evidence of Chinese drawings, it would appear that 

 the Opah is also a native of the eastern seas ; and it is cer- 

 tainly not a little singular, as observed by Mr. Couch, that 

 by a people so distant and secluded as the Japanese, a fish, 

 considered originally as belonging to the same genus as the 

 Doree, should also be regarded as devoted to the Deity, and 

 the only one that is so. The Opah is by them termed Tai : 

 and is esteemed as the peculiar emblem of happiness, because 

 it is sacred to Jebis or Neptune.* 



* Koempfer. History of Japan, folio, vol. i. 



