WRASSES. 



13 



The colouriii^f of the Striped Wrasse dift'ei's con- 

 siderably according to tlie sex, more so than is usual 

 anioii_^ fishes; but both male and females are among the 

 most gorgeous of European fishes and are conspicuous 

 even among the species of the wrasse family, distin- 

 guished as these species are by their luiivei-sal beauty 

 and l)rilliancy of colour. 



Tlie male is dark green, nearly Ijlack, witli bmad, 

 curved, blue stripes on the head, and .5 irregular bhie 

 stripes along the body. The ])elly is flame-yellow, in- 

 terspersed in the anterior part under the lioad with 

 blue spots so dense that they sometimes run into each 

 other. The fins flame-yellow with a narrow edge of 

 blue. On the dorsal fin there is, in addition to this 

 edge, a large patch of blue which extends over the 

 greater part of its first half and is continued by a row 

 of blue spots. The caudal and anal fins are marked 

 with rows of blue spots, and the ^vhole extremity of 

 the ventral fins is blue. The colouring varies a little, 

 as the extent of the dark and j'ellow tints, especially 

 in the posterior part, is not always the same. In some 

 instances the caudal fin is almost wholly blue spotted 

 with yello^v, in others, according to Valenciennes, the 

 yello^v colour spreads backwards along the dorsal sides. 

 The situation of the ])lue markings is constant, but 

 they may be more or less coalescent. The pectoral fins 

 are generally dark green, but according to the figure 

 given by Ascanius they may also be flame-yelloAv. 



The female is minium-red all over, with the same 

 blue marks on the head as the male, Ijut they are more 

 widely dispersed. On the posterior part of the l)ack 

 there are 3 large, black spots," the first t^vo of ^\■luch 

 are separated by a whitish patch, and situated at the 

 base of the branched dorsal ra}'s. These three spots 

 are visible even in specimens which have long been kept 

 in alcohol. The three vertical fins have narrow blue 

 edges, and the beginning of the dorsal fin is always of 

 a more or less pronounced shade of Ijlack, a slight trace 

 of correspondence to the blue colouring of the male. 



Among the males there is a further difference in 

 colour, still more marked than that we have already 

 mentioned: the younger males display a more or less 

 close resemblance to the females on account of their 

 comparative lightness of colour, at anj' rate until the)' 

 have attained a length of from 150 to 170 mm. — A male 

 198 mm. in length, presei"ved in spirits, seems to have 



" Day, Fish. G:t Brit., Irel., I. p. 258. mentions a female \v 

 several with four spots and gives a figure (Plate CXXXIII) of one of 



been very slightl}' dark with a very small blue patch 

 on the dorsal tin. The blue stripes on the body appear 

 only in the anterior j)iirt above the pectoral fins, and 

 on the back are indistinct but unmistakable traces of 

 the three black spots which occur in the female. The 

 caudal and ventral fins resemble those of older males. — 

 It is also said that the; wrasses are subject to periodical 

 changes of coloui' depending on the season of the year, 

 and that in winter theii- colouring is duller. 



In consequence of their remarkable difference in 

 coloui', b(jth sexes were long described as distinct spe- 

 cies, and were regarded as such by Valenciennes in 

 1839, in spite of the fact that by the i''aMwa of Retzius 

 (1800) his attention was called to the opinion current 

 among the Norwegian fishermen, first made known by 

 Fabricius, that the two species represented only different 

 sexes of the same species. The opinion of Fabricius 

 himself was not pulJished before 1818, and does not 

 seem to have attracted the attention of anyone until 

 it was brought to light 1)y Kroyer. Before this time 

 Fries and Wright, in the first edition of «Scandinavian 

 Fishes,» had given an independent and complete solution 

 of the whole question. 



During his visit to Bohuslan Fries was enabled to 

 examine several specimens of both these varieties, and 

 in 1835 he first remarked that no females occurred of 

 the blue variety, and no males of the red. Not being 

 able to discover any difference in shape between them, 

 he assumed that they belonged to the same species. 

 This assumption was completely verified by the inve- 

 stigations made bv v. Wright and him during a vear's 

 stay at the same i)lace, when they were enabled to exa- 

 mine a large number of specimens of both varieties. 



In the works of several authors we may find de- 

 scriptions of male specimens of Labrus carneus or tri- 

 macitlatus, which was the ordinary name for the female. 

 This eiTor may have arisen, partly from the fact that 

 the colour of the specimens described had been destroyed 

 by the spirits in which they were preserved or in the pro- 

 cess of drying, and partly from the similarity mentioned 

 above as existing between the females and the young 

 males. It is also not unlikely that males may sometimes 

 occur in which the dark colouring is never developed 

 and which consequently alwajs resemble the females. 

 The fact that we have descriptions of blue females gives 

 rise to the conjecture that in warmer climates the fe- 



ith only one of these spots; Couch, Fish. Brit, hi., mentioDs (p. 37) 

 them. 



