THE STURGEON. 217 
destruction, is also captured on the coasts of Great Britain and 
Ireland, as examples are by no means uncommon in the fish- 
mongers’ shops of our great cities, a few coming into the hands 
of the principal dealers every season. Yarrell mentions one 
caught in a stake-net near Findhorn, in Scotland, in July 1833, 
Common Sturgeon. 
which measured eight feet six inches in length and weighed two 
hundred and three pounds; but in the Baltic specimens of a 
length of eighteen feet and weighing a thousand pounds have 
oceasionally been captured. The body is long and slender from 
the shoulders backward, somewhat pentagonal in shape, with five 
longitudinal rows of flattened plates, with pointed central spines, 
directed backwards, and the snout is tapering and beak-shaped, 
the mouth small and toothless, so that the sturgeon, though 
almost equalling the white shark in size, is of a much more 
harmless character and formidable only to the crustaceans, small 
fish, or soft animals, be meets with at the bottom in deep water, 
beyond the ordinary reach of sea-nets. Hence he is rarely caught 
in the open sea, but falls an easy prey to the cunning of man 
when entering the friths, es{uaries, and rivers for the purpose of 
spawning. The sturgeon is a highly valuable fish not only for 
its well-flavoured flesh but also for its roe, which furnishes the 
delicate caviar of commerce The smallest’ but most highly 
esteemed of the sturgeons is the Sterlet of the Volga, which 
sometimes fetches such extravagant prices that Prince Potemkin 
has been known to pay three hundred roubles for a single tureen 
of sterlet-soup. 
While many of the numerous members of the salmon family 
confine themselves to the rivulet or to the lake, others alter- 
nate, like the sturgeons, between the river and the sea. Of these 
the most remarkable is the noble fish which has given its name 
to the whole tribe, and may justly be considered as its head, not 
only in point of size but also for its wide-spread utility to man. 
