36 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
The Sturgeon (-4cipenser sturio) 
Fin ForMULA. TEETH. 
Pectoral; 31 rays, of which the first is very None. 
strong and bony. 
Caudal: Upper lobe, 39 rays; lower lobe, 
81 rays, whereof sixteen are bony. 
In all the fins, the rays are generally finely 
denticulated. 
The Sturgeon is the largest fish frequenting British inland 
waters. It is of noble proportions, attaining sometimes a 
length of 18 feet, and weighing many hundredweights. Frank 
Buckland received one taken in a deep-sea trawl off Heligo- 
land, and prepared a mould for making a cast of it. He was 
prevented by illness from finishing the work, but he has left it 
on record that this specimen measured 11 feet 4 inches in 
length, and weighed 623 |b. 
I have found no record of sturgeon so large as this taken 
in British waters, but while these pages are being prepared 
for the press, information comes to hand of two consider- 
able fish of this species. One was taken near the Leven 
estuary in Morecambe Bay, measuring 8 feet 1 inch in length, 
4 feet 8 inches in girth, and weighing 448 lb. The other 
was caught in the Conway, just below Talycafn Bridge, and 
differed materially in proportions from the first. Although 
11 inches longer than the first, it girthed only 3 feet 6 inches, 
and weighed but 320 Ib. 
The origin of popular names for wild animals is always 
interesting to both naturalists and etymologists. Generally they 
are roughly descriptive, or arise from some conspicuous feature 
or characteristic. Dr. Skeat, who holds the foremost place among 
modern English philologists, has traced the name “ sturgeon” 
to a Teutonic source, the same that gave the Anglo-Saxon 
styrian, to stir, and interprets it to mean “the stirrer.” In 
Anglo-Saxon the fish was called styria, just as in Swedish 
