347 



ACCOUNT OF THE FISH. 



BY 



SIR JOHN RICHARDSON, C.B., F.R.S., 



HON. F.E.S.ED., ETC. ETC. ETC. 



THE small collection of fish brought from Wellington Sound 

 by Sir Edward Belcher is interesting from the locality in 

 which it was formed, high in respect of latitude, at a consi- 

 derable distance from the Greenland shores, and still further 

 removed from Behriug's Straits. The families to which the 

 specimens belong are among the characteristic forms of the 

 northern seas, and their members are remarkable for their 

 strong generic physiognomy, and consequently for the diffi- 

 culty that naturalists experience in framing concise and dis- 

 tinctive phrases for the discrimination of the species. 



The first group that we have to notice, the Cottidce, suffici- 

 ently illustrate this remark. So strong is the family aspect 

 of these small and familiar fish, that in the early progress of 

 ichthyology the Coitus yobio and C. scorpius were supposed to 

 be inhabitants of all the waters of the northern hemisphere. 

 More minute observation has shown differences in specimens 

 from distant localities ; and we are now perhaps in danger of 

 running into the opposite extreme, of unduly restricting the 

 geographical ranges while we augment the numbers of the 

 species. Fabricius, who until lately has been almost the 

 sole authority for Greenland fish, describes three Cotti be- 

 sides the Coitus cataphractus, which is the type of the genus 



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