﻿352 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 47 



between eight and ten inches, and in British waters it may reach 

 sexual maturity when four inches long. The American form, along 

 the New England and British colonial coast, is about as large as the 

 Scandinavian fish. 



IV 



The species is one of the most abundant of fishes in the high 

 northern seas. It enters most harbors and numbers may at almost 

 any time during the summer be caught from the wharves. It is, 

 Smitt declares, " one of those that may be called migratory," inas- 

 much as it " moves from one place to another along the coast of the 

 sea which it inhabits, occurring in considerable quantities at a cer- 

 tain spot for some years and then suddenly diminishing in number, 

 not to reappear in any abundance until after the lapse of ten or 

 twenty years." 



It is most abundant " in water of no great depth, where the bottom 

 consists of clay or stones overgrown with seaweed," but is by no 

 means confined to such places and may be found almost anywhere, 

 and at considerable depths. 



It is an unsocial fish and lives alone most of its life, although gen- 

 erally not far from its fellows. 1 That life is spent mostly near 

 or on the bottom and its sluggishness is rarely relieved except when 

 hunger is to be satisfied. According to Smitt, it often " passes the 

 hours of daylight in dark crevices, awaiting the approach of some 

 victim," but, on the other hand, it may be sometimes seen in high 

 latitudes (as around Newfoundland and Grand Manan) in shallow 

 water when the sun, in unclouded splendor, is at the zenith. 2 When 

 impelled to move, " its movements in the water are speedy but not 

 prolonged, and the winding curves," somewhat " like those of an 

 Eel, in which the body moves, are apparently the result of consider- 

 able exertion. The great size of its fins does not contribute greatly to 

 the speed of its movements, but seems rather intended to maintain the 

 equilibrium of its bulky and unwieldy body." Otherwise it is so 

 apathetic and " its timidity is so slight that, when touched, it only 

 makes a leisurely movement to avoid the object that has disturbed 

 it, and soon stops, as still as if nothing had happened." This apathy 

 or want of sensitiveness sometimes astonishes a captor. " When 

 drawn out of the water, it wriggles a few times in its efforts to get 



1 This statement is to contrast the species with schooling fishes. 



" In a couple of hours before noon on a bright July day the writer caught 

 16 Sculpins from a small wharf in Grand Manan and found 10 females and 

 6 males; the collective sexual differences were for the first time pointed out 

 in the Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila.. 1872, pp. 213, 214. 



