98 SALT-WATER FISHES 



spiracles. The tail-fin, too, is small and less pointed than in 

 most sharks, also lacking the characteristic unequal lobes. 



The Nurse {Scyllium catulus) is also known as the larger 

 spotted dog-fish, because the spots on its body are rather larger 

 than those in the allied species. It is not commonly met with 

 of a greater length than 3 ft. or a little more, but is said 

 to exceed 5 ft. In colour it is reddish brown, and has large 

 dark spots over the body. The teeth are small, and the fish 

 feeds on both fishes and molluscs. It deposits its eggs in 

 spring, and the young are hatched out the following Christmas, 

 or rather sooner. The eggs are provided with tendrils at the 

 corners, which doubtless serve to anchor them to stones, weeds, 

 or other convenient supports under water, and in this they 

 differ from the eggs of the rays, the corners of which bear only 

 short, hard projections, or horns, that cannot possibly answer 

 the same purpose. Some observers are of opinion that the 

 eggs of the rays therefore drift at the mercy of tides and 

 storms, but Matthias Dunn, whose theories often bore the 

 strictest investigation, used to say that they had a sticky 

 secretion that served them as well. More mysterious in the 

 egg-case of the rowhound and nurse are the slits, the object of 

 which has been much discussed, and which may perhaps admit 

 freshly oxygenated water to the growing embryo. 



The Rowhound {^S. canicida) is a very similar fish to the nurse, 

 but its spots are much smaller, often resembling mere punctures 

 in the skin, and the skin itself is somewhat smoother. It is, 

 nevertheless, rough to the touch, and the vernacular name is in 

 fact only a corruption of" rough hound." The most remarkable 

 property about this fish, which is more commonly caught on 

 our coasts than the other species, is one that, within the writer's 

 knowledge, is peculiar to itself, at least among British fishes. 

 When a rowhound is caught and thrown in the boat's well in 

 company with pollack, cod, or other dark-coloured kinds, the 

 water that drips from the body, or still more the actual contact 

 of its skin, bleaches such portions of the other fishes as are 



