322 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



Males and females differ in appearance, the former being the more slender and 

 with higher fins. Each of the scales along the lateral line bears three or more 

 prickles in males, but only one or two at the most in females, while some of the 

 latter have no scales. Furthermore the inner edges of the rays of the pectoral and 

 ventral fins are armed with teeth or prickles in the male but not in the female. 



Color. — The basic hue of the upper parts is usually some shade of brown, 

 ranging from a warm reddish tint to almost black, with the top sides of the head 

 marked with pale blotches and the back and sides with broad dark bars. The 

 lower sides are more or less spotted with yellow. The belly is yellowish in females 

 and reddish orange with large round white spots in males, this being a good field 

 mark for distinguishing the sexes. The dorsal fins are dark and pale mottled, the 

 second often with 3 or 4 definite crossbars, and the caudal with various dark mot- 

 tlings. The rays of the pectoral and anal fins are yellow with 2 or 3 irregular dark 

 crossbars. Males are more brightly colored than females in the breeding season, 

 their red and yellow tints becoming very brilliant, with the intensification of the 

 red or coppery ground color of the belly bringing out the white spots more clearty 

 than at other seasons. 



Size. — This is the largest Gulf of Maine sculpin, growing to a length of about 

 3 feet, but the average run of the adults taken there is only about 8 to 14 inches. 

 This species increases in size from south to north, Greenland fish averaging much 

 larger than those taken off New England or the Maritime Provinces. 80 



General range. — One or another race of this variable fish is known from Great 

 Britain northward all along the coasts of Europe, in Arctic seas generally, including 

 Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, north Siberia, west Greenland, and northern Lab- 

 rador, and southward along the American coast to New York. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — This is one of the most familiar shore fishes, 

 common all around the whole coast line of the Gulf of Maine, though neither as 

 abundant nor as universal as the longhorn sculpin (p. 325). Perhaps 50 fathoms, 

 from which depth Huntsman records one near Campobello Island at the mouth of 

 the Bay of Fundy, may be set as its lower depth limit. It is seldom caught on 

 cod or hake trawls deeper than 15 to 20 fathoms, and although a day's codfishing 

 on any of the shoaler ledges, in say 8 to 10 fathoms, is likely to yield an occasional 

 "shorthorn" among other fish, the great majority live in depths of less than 5 or 

 6 fathoms. Although more strictly confined to shoal water than is the longhorn 

 sculpin (p. 326), it is less often seen close to tide mark, usually being in at least a 

 fathom of water. It does not run as far up the estuaries and never into brackish 

 water. This sculpin has not been positively recorded from Georges or Browns 

 Banks. Sculpins of some sort, it is true, are so common on the former that the 

 otter trawls often catch from 20 to 100 per set, and equally so on Browns Bank, 

 but fishermen lump this and the next species together, and the fact that the few 

 that have been positively identified on the banks have all proved to be longhorns 



80 Most American ichthyologists recognize two subspecies of this fish — the true "shorthorn" (scorpius) and the "Green- 

 land sculpin" {.granlandicux) — and with the prevailing tendency to call American and European fish by different names it is as 

 the latter that our local sculpin has usually been recorded. The differences between the two (size, relative breadth of the top of 

 the head, and length of the spines of the dorsal fin) are so very slight, however, and all of them have proven so variable, that 

 we follow Huntsman (1922a) in uniting the two, the more willingly since both forms have been found on each side of the Atlantic. 



