Order Pediculati: The Anglers 749 
The skin is smooth, with dermal flaps about the head. Over the 
mouth, like a fishing-rod, hangs the first dorsal spine with a lure 
at the tip. The fishes lie flat on the bottom with sluggish move- 
ments except for the convulsive snap of the jaws. It has*beén 
denied that the bait serves to attract small fishes to their destruc- 
tion, but the current belief that it does so is certainly plausible. 
Mr. Saville Kent recently expressed doubt as to whether the 
fishing-frogs really use the first spine for purposes of angling. 
In no other group, however, is the coloring more distinctly 
that of the rocks and alge among which the fishes lurk. 
The great fishing-frog of the North Atlantic, Lophius piscato- 
rius, is also known as angler, monkfish, goosefish, allmouth, 
« 
Fig. 663 —Anko or Fishing-frog, Lophius litulon (Jordan). Matsushima Bay, Japan. 
wide-gape, kettleman, and bellows-fish. It is common in shal- 
low water both in America and Europe, ranging southward to 
Cape Hatteras and to the Mediterranean. It reaches a length 
of three feet or more. A fisherman told Mr. Goode that “he 
once saw a struggle in the water, and found that a goosefish had 
swallowed the head and neck of a large loon, which had pulled 
it to the surface and was trying to escape. There is authentic 
record of seven wild ducks having been taken from the stomach 
of one of them. Slyly approaching from below, they seize 
birds as they float upon the surface.” 
