]84 SERRANin.K. 



taken, following pieces of floating wreck or timber, in the mouth of 

 the British Channel, or upon the coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall. 

 By Mr. Couch, the Cornish ichthyologist, it had been supposed identical 

 with the Stone-basse of Sloane, a Jamaican fish ; which is, however, 

 some species of Gerres (see Cuv. et Val. vi. p. 460) : and subsequently, 

 by Mr. Yarrell, who was then unacquainted with it, except through 

 the drawing and description of Mr. Couch, it was referred, with close 

 approximation to the truth, to the genus Serranus of Cuvier, under 

 the name of S. Couc/iii. On the first view of the rude but characteristic 

 figure of it, copied in the British Fishes (1st edit.), vol. i. p. 12, from 

 Mr. Couch*'s drawing, I was at once struck with its resemblance to the 

 common Cherne of Madeira, the Polyprion cernium of Valenciennes: 

 and this identification has, by Mr. Yarrell, since been perfectly established. 

 (See Brit. Fish. Suppl. 1. p. 2.) 



Although this fish is stated* to be very common in the Mediterranean 

 at the present day, it seems to have escaped entirely the notice of the 

 ancient Greek and Roman naturalists. It is still more strancfe that no 

 trace of it appears in Rondelet, Salviani, Willughby, or Linnseus : and 

 its first record by Schneider is said, by MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes, 

 to have been derived from a drawing, communicated by the English 

 naturalist Latham, of an American example. By the earlier writers 

 above named, if occasionally seen, it might be easily confounded with 

 the Basse {Lahrax Lupus, Cuv.), or the Umbre (Corvina nigra, Cuv.) ; 

 with wdiich it offers considerable agreement, both in habits and in general 

 aspect : and this may perhaps account for its omission also by the later 

 writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 



The Sliern or Sherny has an extensive geographic range : for, without 

 following it into the Pacific ocean with MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes, 

 on the less perfectly conclusive authority of Forster''s drawing and de- 

 scription of his Perca prognathos from Queen Charlotte's Island, it has 

 been taken not only in the British Channel and' the Mediterranean, but 

 at three points of an equilateral triangle embracing almost the whole of 

 the Atlantic Ocean ; viz. at the Madciran and Canarian Islands, at the 

 Cape of Good Hope, and more recently by D'Orbigny at the mouth 

 of the great estuary of La Plata, on the opposite shores of South 

 America. ■{• In Madeira, where it occupies the place of the Mediter- 

 ranean Corvina nigra,^ or Sciana Aquila, it is one of the commonest 

 and best known fishes in the market ; being in general more highly 

 esteemed for the table than it deserves, probably because it is the only 

 tolerable fish of proper size and shape to form what people call " a 



* Cuv. et Val. iii. 21, 2,<). f See Cuv. et Val. viii. 475. 



J This fish is sometimes seen, but liitlieito has not l)eon captured, in Madeira. It is well 

 known at Lisbon by the name of" Corvina." 



