THE HAKE AND THE SCABBARD FISH 115 



The feeding habits of lialce, and its Hfe history, have been studied 

 witli great skill and perseverance by Hickling. and he has made the 

 subject accessible to the general reader by an excellent small mono- 

 graph in the Buckland series. The following are extracts from this 

 work, " The food of large hake consists of fishes and fantails or 

 cephalopods. The most important item is the blue or bastard 

 whiting (gatUis poutassou), then come small hake, horse-mackerel, 

 mackerel, fantails and herring, in that order. During winter and 

 spring, when most of the hake are Hving at depths of 90 to 300 

 fathoms or more, their food is almost entirely of blue whiting, 

 smaller hake and fantails. When the hake move into shallower 

 waters in summer and autumn they find themselves among herring, 

 mackerel and horse-mackerel, and feed heavily on these fish, as welt 

 as on smaller hake. An interesting fact about the food of hake is 

 that bottom -living fish are rarely eaten. All the fishes and fantails, 

 i.e. small cephalopods, M'liich form the main food of the hake, are 

 creatures that live in the middle depths of the sea, such as the blue 

 whiting, which can be caught near the surface in suitable nets in 

 places Avhere the depth is more than 1,000 fathoms, herrings and 

 mackerel, wliich are usually caught in drift nets, and fast-swimming 

 fantails whose relatives are the giant squids. Since the hake feeds 

 so much on mid-water creatures, it must usually swim in mid- 

 water to get its food. It must be, therefore, usually out of reach of 

 the trawl. But the hake feeds mostly at night and lies quietly on 

 or near the sea bottom during the day. Diminished catches of 

 hake at night are as notable in very deep water (300 fathoms or 

 more) as in shallower water ; it can scarcely, therefore, be a simple 

 matter of light and darkness. When the hake are feeding at night 

 they probably scatter about at all levels of depth in their hunt for 

 food. When we study the food of hake a step farther back we find 

 that all these fishes and the fantails feed on a group of small mid- 

 water fishes and sluimps, of which easily the most important are 

 the krill. Krill are shrimps specially adapted for swimming, and 

 have a definite habit of swimming upwards towards the siu-face at 

 night and sinking to the bottom by day." 



The teeth of hake are sharp and spaced like the whiting, but they 

 are movable with elastic hinges which bend back. They are pig- 

 mented and so also is the mouth ; there is a small V-shaped area 

 of dentition on the vomer. Some fishermen say that the bite is 

 poisonous. It is not wise to speculate too boldly, but we feel there 

 is some ground for suggesting that the skeletal changes and the 

 luiusual conformation of the acoustic tubercles may be associated 

 with the great range of depth which is so characteristic of its habitat. 



