354 FISHES OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



The sun-fish attains a weight of 1,500 pounds, and one is recorded from the 

 CaUfornia coast which is reported to have weighed 1,800 pounds. The powerful 

 turtle-hke jaws suggest that the species feeds on hard-shelled creatures, but as a 

 matter of fact jellyfish have proved to be the only food found in a number of 

 specimens examined at Woods Hole, Mass. The fish has no economic value at 

 the present time, although it has been suggested that glue may be made from the 

 abundant subdermal elastic tissue. 



Family SCORP^NIDtE. The Scorpion-fishes and Rock-fishes. 



A numerous and important marine family represented in all parts of the 

 world, but most abundant in the temperate portions of the Pacific Ocean; most 

 of the American species occur on the Pacific coast, where they enter largely into 

 the fisheries. These fishes are of small to moderate size, inhabit rocky bottom, 

 and many produce their young alive. The leading family characters are an 

 oblong, compressed body; a large head with more or less prominent bony ridges 

 terminating in spines; a large terminal mouth with small teeth on jaws and 

 vomer; protractile premaxillary; broad maxillary; wide gill-slits; gill-membranes 

 not united and free from the isthmus; large pseudobranchiae; opercle and pre- 

 opercle usually spinous; small, usually ctenoid scales completely covering body; 

 a simple lateral line; rather few pyloric coeca; air-bladder present or absent; 2 con- 

 tinuous dorsal fins, the anterior with 8 to 16 spines and longer than soft portion; 

 short anal with 3 spines; caudal well developed, of various shapes; broad pec- 

 torals; thoracic ventrals with the rays i,5. There are about 8 American genera, 

 5 represented on the Atlantic coast but only 2 in shoal water. Only 1 genus as 

 yet detected in North Carolina waters, but fishes belonging in several other 

 genera occur off that coast.* 



Genus SCORP.iENA Linnaeus. Scorpion-fishes. 



A numerous genus of warm-water fishes with rather elongate, somewhat 

 compressed body; large, rough head; large mouth, with bands of villiform teeth 

 on jaws, vomer, and palatines; 2 pairs of spines on occiput, 2 spines on opercle, 

 and 4 or 5 on preopercle; gill-rakers few in number; ctenoid scales, the top of 

 head more or less naked; body and head more or less thickly beset with short 

 dermal flaps or filaments; air-bladder absent; 12 dorsal spines; rounded caudal; 

 large, broad pectorals, usually with procurrent base; and ventrals arising pos- 

 terior to pectorals. Rather small fishes of peculiar form and variegated colora- 

 tion, having little food value; about a dozen American species, some of which 

 stray northward along the Atlantic coast of the United States. The strong dor- 

 sal spines can inflict a painful wound, which fact, together with the repulsive 

 appearance, makes these fishes unpopular or even dreaded among fishermen. 

 Besides the 2 following species, several others may be looked for as stragglers: 



* Pontinus rathbuni is known otily from off Cape Hatteras in 80 fathoms; Setarches paTmatiis has been 

 taken in the Gulf Stream off North Carolina and other states; and Helicolenus maderensis occurs offshore from 

 Cape Hatteras to New York. 



