ACANTHOPTERYGII. 275 



put into a vessel filled with water taken elsewhere, than from 

 the lake or river in which it may happen to be caught. Its 

 flesh is white, tender, and easy of digestion, and is often trans- 

 ported considerable distances, wrapped in herbs or snow. 



Its growth is very rapid, where there is no want of food; 

 but it requires a great number of small fish, which it devours 

 with great avidity, sometimes, when adult, attacking small 

 perch and pike, though, when young, it frequently falls 

 a prey itself to those ravenous marauders. The plunging 

 water-fowl destroy many of them, and pursue them even to 

 the very depths of their favourite retreat. In warm weather, 

 toward the middle of spring, they quit the deep water, and 

 deposit their spawn on substances which they may find near 

 the bank, so that it may feel the vivifying influence of the 

 sun. 



Our figure of the Luc. Canadensis is by Colonel Smith, 

 from a specimen drawn by him in Canada, where it is com- 

 mon, and known as the green pickering. The spots on the 

 sides are yellowish white ; those on the fins are nearly black. 



Of the numerous species of the genus serranus of the text, 

 and of its several subgenera, the Mediterranean barber 1 , An- 

 thias sacer, of the text, is the most remarkable, and that for 

 its splendour and beauty. This fish, which is ordinarily se- 

 ven or eight inches long, inhabits the Mediterranean, and 

 feeds principally on small Crustacea. Its history is much 

 confused. Rondelet, the first describer of it, seems gratui- 

 tously to have considered it as the Anthias of the ancients ; 

 and that notion was adopted by the Ichthyologists of the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Artedi, and after him, 

 Linnaeus, referred it to the genus Labrus, the latter with an- 

 thias, as a specific addition associating it with an American 



1 So called from the third dorsal spine, and its fleshy appendage, pre- 

 set some remote or fancied resemblance to an open razor. 



T 2 



