1922] on Biological Studies in Madeira 571 



habit of accompanying floating logs of timber with their attached 

 barnacles and other food, and it was long erroneously ascribed to the 

 Stone Basses of Jamaica by a Cornish ichthyologist. The Cornish 

 people, you know, are learned in pilchards, but the true identification 

 of the monster before you was eventually established by Mr. Yarrell. 

 It is singular, too, that so remarkable a fish, in size, form and food 

 quality, now known to be quite common in the Mediterranean Sea, 

 should altogether have escaped the notice of the early Greek and 

 Roman naturalists, and indeed still more strange that there is no 

 mention of it in the writings of Rondelet, Salviani, or Linnaeus ; but 

 we have to remember that both in its habits and general aspects it 

 might easily be confounded with Labrax Lupus and other near 

 relations. 



The sherny in Madeira is captured by the hook, and though 

 small shoals of fish weighing from 5 to 20 lbs. are freely taken near 

 the surface, or 20 fathoms beneath, the proper habitat of the full- 

 sized creature, weighing up to 100 lbs., or even much more, is well 

 away in the open sea, at the enormous depth of 2000 to 8000 feet. 

 The fishermen weight the end of their line with a stone, and bait 

 the last 50 feet at intervals of about 18 inches with mackerel flesh 

 attached to strong hooks. Brought up suddenly from so great a 

 depth, the compressed air within the fish expands and so distends 

 the fish on the removal of the vast pressure below that it rises to the 

 surface not indeed dead, but wholly powerless in a sort of cataleptic 

 spasm, with its stomach or some large fold of it inverted and pro- 

 truding from its mouth like a huge bladder, and with its eyes forced 

 in front of their sockets. In the last 100 feet or so of the ascent, 

 the captured fish rises faster than the attached line can be drawn in, 

 shooting quite out of the water at its first emergence like a cork or a 

 bladder, from the lightness caused by its vast distention. The 

 sherny is spawned in the warm surface water of the open sea, and 

 lives its early life in the sunlit depths, but I can give you no clue as 

 to the conditions which prompt the fish eventually to descend into 

 the dark, cold and abysmal depths whence the larger examples are 

 only to be met with ; neither have I so far succeeded in obtaining 

 any distinct idea of the age of the sherny in its varying size by scale 

 growth or markings. The deep sea examples arrive at the surface 

 fat, plump and well fed, and thus abundantly confirm our experience 

 that the sea is not azoic at any depth. 



In general character the sherny is an ungainly fish, with a capa- 

 cious gape, an enormous head, and eyes surprisingly small and dull 

 when compared with the highly- coloured brassy lustre of the huge 

 eye of some of the Berycidse, which also live in deep water. Never- 

 theless the dull covering of the sherny is shared also by the Prome- 

 theus Atlanticus and Aplunts, which live in the same association in 

 those stupendous depths, and contrast surprisingly with the brilliant 

 hues — silver, scarlet, rose and purple — of the Scorpena Lampris and 



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