380 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



Figure 205. — Lookdown (Selene vomer). From Goode. Drawing by H. L. Todd. 



below, with the ground tint of the back leaden; 

 the sides are barred with several crossbands, 

 variously described as dark or golden. But these 

 bands fade out with growth. 



Size. — Reaches a weight of about 2 pounds. 



General range. — Warm waters on the east and 

 west coasts of America, north rarely to Cape Cod, 

 straying to the Gulf of Maine and to Nova Scotia; m 

 common from Chesapeake Bay southward. 



Occurrence in the O-ulf of Maine. — There were 

 only three records for the lookdown in our Gulf 

 up to 1933; two of them for Casco Bay, the third 

 for Boston Harbor (Dorchester) . But many small 

 ones were reported from the traps at the mouth of 

 Casco Bay during that autumn, one from Beverly 

 on the north shore of Massachusetts Bay, and 

 one from North Truro on Cape Cod. Evidently 

 this was an unusual incursion, for no one would be 

 apt to overlook so bizarre a straggler from the 

 south. 



Leatherjacket 



Oligoplites saurus 

 Schneider) 1801 



(Bloch and 



10 Jones (Proc. and Trans. Nova Scotian Inst. Sci., vol. 5, App., 1879, 

 p. 89) and Honeyman (Trans. Nova Scotian Inst. Sci., vol. 6, 1886, p. 323) 

 report young fry as occasionally found in the shore waters of Nova Scotia, 

 presumably along the outer coast, for tropical fishes are taken oftener there 

 than along the Gulf of Maine shore of the Province. 



Jordan and Evermann, 1896-1900, p. 898. 



Description. — The most interesting character of 

 the leather jacket, and one which places it at 

 a glance, is that the rear part of its soft dorsal fin 

 back from the 7th ray, and also its anal fin back 

 from the 5th ray, is broken, as it were, into a series 

 of 12 low nearly separate finlets, the ray in each 

 of which is subdivided at the tip like the hairs of 

 a little brush. We need only note further that 

 its body is about 3K times as long as it is deep, 

 very strongly flattened sidewise, and thin, being 

 only about one-third as thick as it is deep; its 

 upper jaw bone reaches back about as far as the 

 rear edge of the eye; its snout is moderately 

 pointed; its caudal peduncle very slender, with a 

 low, inconspicuous keel on either side. Its first 

 dorsal fin is reduced to about 5 separate spines, 

 each with small fin membrane and its second 

 dorsal has about 20 rays; its soft anal fin, also 

 of about 20 rays, is preceded by two stout and 

 conspicuous spines, forming, together, a separate 

 finlet. Its lateral line is nearly straight, and its 



