CHAPTER VII 



THE GO'BIES, SUCKERS, AND BLENNIES 



To those who in their superior knowledge regard the 

 British vertebrate fauna as either worked out, or at most 

 subject to periodic additions in the shape of straggHng birds 

 doubtfully included, it may come as a shock to learn that a 

 new British fish has been identified during the year 1903 by 

 Mr. Pickard-Cambridge. He, at the suggestion of Mr. 

 Boulenger — a suggestion offered as far back as 1899 in the 

 Annals and ^iagazine of Natural History — searched the rock- 

 pools of Cornwall for Gobius capita, a species with which Mr. 

 Boulenger had been familiar in the vicinity of Concarneau, and 

 which, he thought, might be the abnormally long 9-inch 

 specimens of G. niger mentioned by Couch and Day. This 

 species, hitherto reckoned the largest of British gobies, never 

 exceeds 5^ inches. In Brittany, at any rate, G. capito, now a 

 British fish, is regarded as an excellent table-fish, so we may 

 in time eat it on this side of the Channel. 



Some thirty or more of these small fishes must be con- 

 sidered in the present chapter. Not one of these, it is safe to 

 affirm, will ever be seen at the fishmonger's shop, or, seen 

 there, would be recognised by his customers. To the general 

 rule of insignificant size and commercial unimportance there 

 are just two exceptions, the lumpsucker and wolf-fish, each 

 of which grows to a large weight and commands a price as 

 food in country districts. The fishes are as follow : — 



