114 SCORP/ENID.E. 



In a female individual sixteen inches long and full of roe, of brilliant colours, 

 and in high season, taken in the month of August, I found the liver small, the 

 ceeca nine in numbei-, rather large but short, the intestine making only two volu- 

 tions, the ovaria highly vascular, large and full of just formed eggs. There was 

 no trace of air-bladder, and the peritoneum, like the whole of the viscera, and 

 especially the liver, was pale or whitish. 



Of the nine al)dominal vertebrae, the four last only have apophyses beneath, of 

 which those of the three last unite into a single strong bone, notched only at the 

 tip, and winged behind. The first of the fifteen caudal vertebrae is indicated by 

 its inferior apophyses being quite simple, or entire at the tip. 



The individual figured was a male in milt, of the pale-coloured deep- 

 shaped sort, captured at Machico in July ; and measured seventeen inches 

 in length, weighing three pounds and a half. The largest fish I ever 

 saw of this kind was twenty inches long, and weighed five pounds and 

 a quarter. In another taken in February of the same kind and weight, 

 but only nineteen inches long, though proving when boiled quite an old 

 fish, the stomach was enormously distended with a freshly swallowed 

 Cuttle-fish (Octopus vulgaris, Lam.) of at least half a pound weight. 

 This rendered the belly so prominent, that before dissection I supposed 

 the fish, notwithstanding the season, to be in spa^vn : but it proved to 

 be a male. Individuals, however, of only fifteen inches long have some- 

 times proved on boiling quite old fishes, and as tasteless, hard, and tough, 

 as leather. Thus their goodness is dependent on their age : but their age 

 cannot always be inferred with certainty from their incheso 



MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes after relating on the authority of Brun- 

 nich, that this fish attains the length of two feet, and a weight of three or 

 four pounds, and mentioning that M. de Martens, in his " Voyage a 

 Venise," says, it sometimes weighs six pounds, give an amusing instance of 

 the exaggerations and mistakes of copyists. Pontoppidan, the Norwegian 

 Naturalist, says of his Marulke (Sebastes Norvegicus, Cuv.), that it was 

 four feet long. Bloch, confounding the Marulke with the Mediterranean 

 Scorpana Scrofa, copies this ; substituting, however, for four feet, three 

 or four ells. And lastly, Lacepede, putting for these German or Prus- 

 sian ells of two feet each, French metres of three feet, and using the ex- 

 pression " more than four," completes the extension of a fish rarely ex- 

 ceeding eighteen inches, to a length of twelve or thirteen feet. 



At Machico, the Carneiro is called frequently Rocaz or Roqueime. The 

 example figured was unanimously pronounced to be a Rocaz by the fisher- 

 men of that place ; and I suspect that their Requeime or Roqueime is pro- 

 perly the var. |3, or Carneiro de Rolo. 



The two sinistral suborbitaries of the example figured, cleared of their 

 inteo-uments, arc represented of the natural size in the accompanying plate, 

 below the fish itself. 



