38 FISHES OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



adhere with remarkable firmness ; and when they are sepa- 

 rated, there is discoverable, on the edges of the skin, which 

 enclosed them, a sort of tarnished argentine or brightish leaden 

 hue. Rays of all the fins coarse. The pectorals are long and 

 pointed. Tongue white and smooth. 



The intestines of the individual I last dissected were 

 lengthy, convoluted, and filled with the fragments of several 

 sorts of crabs. Swimming bladder capacious and thick. Pe- 

 ritoneum, on opening the abdomen, blackish. Two patches of 

 teeth in the upper part of the throat, and two smaller corres- 

 ponding patches on the lower part, a short distance in front of 

 the entrance of the gullet. But all of these are very inferior 

 in strength and size to those of the mouth. 



Rays : B. 4 ; V. 6 ; P. 6 ; D. 24; A. 13 ; C. 19." 



Pagrus. Cuv. 



Generic characters. Body deep, compressed : dorsal fin sin- 

 gle, the rays partly spinous, the posterior flexible : four or six 

 stro?ig conical teeth in front, supported by smaller conical teeth 

 behind them, with two rows of rounded molar teeth on each side 

 of both jaws. 



P. argyrops. Lin. Big Porgee. IScapaug. Scup. 



Trans. Lit. et Philosph. Soc. N. Y. vol. i, p. 404. 

 Cuv. et Valeric. Hist. Nat. des Poiss. t. vi. p. 164. 



This species, which Mitchell describes in his " History of the 

 Fishes of New York," as the " Labr us versicolor," Cuvier con- 

 siders the same as the " Spams Argyrops." L. It is taken in 

 large quantities in Buzzard's Bay and the Vineyard Sound, but 

 has not been met with in Massachusetts Bay until within the 

 last five or six years. At New Bedford and Holmes Hole, it 

 is one of the most common species in the harbors, and is used 

 more than any other fish when fresh. At the latter place, it is 

 taken, from the first of June until the middle of October, with 



