250 ACANTHOPTERYGII. MULLET FAMILY. 



lips very laroe and fleshy, with the margins ciliated^ 

 and the teeth penetrating into their substance as so 

 many hairs. The colour of the head and back is 

 greenish, of the rest of the body silvery, with six or 

 seven parallel horizontal lines along the sides, of the 

 same colour as the back. In the preceding article 

 we mentioned that Dr. Parnell had not met with a 

 single instance of the Grey Mullet : of the one now 

 under review he states, '* I have observed this fish 

 to be exceedingly common in the months of Septem- 

 ber and October on the Devonshire coast ; I have 

 found it common on the west coast of Scotland, and 

 occasionally large shoals of them appear on the 

 east coasts." Scarcely a summer passes in which a 

 few are not found at the difi'erent stations of the- 

 Firth of Forth, and occasionally of large size. A 

 specimen was taken in the Hopetoun salmon-nets in 

 June 1835, which measured twenty-three inches^ 

 although a foot is by much the more common size. 

 Dr. Johnston has noticed it off Berwick ; and in 

 some seasons numbers are taken off Dunbar, and 

 despatched to the neighbouring markets for sale. 

 Sir AYilliam Jardine procured a specimen twenty 

 inches long in the Solway Frith, and Mr. Thompson, 

 Belfast, remarks, it passes in the North of Ireland as 

 the common Grey Mullet, and is occasionally seen 

 in the south. M. Risso mentions it reaches the 

 weight of 8 lbs. in the Mediterranean. A difference 

 observed by Mr. Couch, in the habits of this Grey 

 Mullet and the capito, led him to the knowledge of 

 the distribution of the two species ; the one under 



