492 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



handedness, large mouth, and symmetrical ventral fins is its close relative, tne 

 four-spotted flounder, but the color pattern of the latter is distinctive (p. 494) 

 and its fin rays are fewer in number. The summer flounder is one of the narrower 

 flounders. Its dorsal fin (about 87 rays) originates opposite the forward margin 

 of the eye, its anal is of about 68 rays, the margin of its caudal is rounded, and its 

 pectorals and ventrals are relatively smaller than those of the plaice. 



Color. — It has long been known that flounders are generally dark on a dark 

 bottom and pale on a pale one. Perhaps the summer flounder is the most variable 

 in color of all our local species and the one which most closely adapts its pattern 

 to that of the ground on which it lies. Like most flounders it is white below and 

 of some shade of brown, gray, or drab above, but it can assume a wide range of 

 tints from nearly white on white sand through various hues of gray, blue, green, 

 orange, pink, and brown to almost black. Red alone did Mast"" flnd it unable to 

 match. As a rule its upper surface is variegated with pale and dark, with the pat- 

 tern fine or coarse according to that of the bottom, and it may or may not be marked 



/'.'#' 



'^^vfel#^- -■ >'" 



V^f.,- 



V, ,^^^■,-N-<■"^■' 



FlQ. 249.— Summer flounder (Paralichthvi deiUatm) 



with small eyespots of a darker tint of the general ground color. Masts's experi- 

 ments show that it is slower in adapting its coloration to the actual colors of the 

 bottom than to the general pattern, responding most rapidly to yellows and browns 

 and very slowly to reds, greens, or blues, on which the adaptation may not reach 

 its maxunum for two or three months. He also observed that the skin simulates 

 rather than exactly reproduces the pattern of the background. 



Size. — Summer flounders grow to a maximum weight of 10 to 25 pounds and 

 to a length of 3 feet, while the largest of which we find definite record weighed 26 

 pounds, but the average size of the fish caught is only 2 to 5 pounds. The relation 

 of length to weight appears from the following table: " 



Length Average weight 



15 inches 1 P"*^"^ 



17tol8inches 2 pounds 



20 inches 3 pounds 



22inches 4 pounds 



27 inches 8 pounds 



30 inches ^0 P°"°dB 



" Mast. Bulletin, United States Bureau of Fisheries, Vol. XXXIV, 1914 (1916), p. 177. » From Qoode, et al., 1884. 



