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THE HALIBUT. 



HALIBUT, FLAT-FISH AND FLOUNDER. 



Flat fish, with eyes distorted, square, ovoid, rhomboid, long, 

 Some cased in mail, some slippery-backed, the feeble and the strong, 

 Sedan'd on poles, or dragg'd on hooks, or poured from tubs like water, 

 Gasp side by side, together piled, in one promiscuous slaughter. 



Badham. 



^T^HE Halibut is widely distributed through the North Atlantic and 

 North Pacific, near the shores, in shallow water, as well as upon the 

 off-shore banks and the edges of the continental slope down to a depth of 

 two hundred and fifty fathoms or more. In the Western Atlantic the 

 species has not been observed south of the fortieth parallel, stragglers 

 having occasionally been taken off Sandy Hook, Block Island, and Mon- 

 tauk Point, while it ranges north at least to Cumberland Gulf, latitude 

 64 , and as far as Disko, Greenland, five or six degrees within the Arctic 

 Circle. Along the entire west coast of Greenland they exist, abundant 

 about Iceland and north to Spitsbergen, in latitude 8o°. No one knows 

 to what extent they are distributed along the European and Asiatic shores 

 of the Arctic Ocean, but they have been observed on both sides of the 

 North Cape, in East and West Denmark, and from the North Cape, 

 latitude 71 , south along the entire western line of the Scandinavian 

 Peninsula, in the Skager Rack and Kattegat, but not, however in the 

 Baltic. South of latitude 50 their range in the Eastern Atlantic appears 

 to cease. 



On the Pacific coast the Halibut, which has been shown by Dr. Bean to 



