NO. 1782. STRUCTURE AND HABITS OF WOLFFISHES—GILL. 173 



Wauffs or wujfs, accredited to Yorkshire, are evidently provincial- 

 isms for wolves. Equivalent terms are wolffisch, seewolf, and wolffisch 

 of the Dutch, S0ulv and TJlvjisk of the Danes, and Loup marin of the 

 French. The Swedes prefer the analogy to the cat (Hafkatten or 

 seacat) . In Orkney, swinejish is in vogue, and allusion thereby, accord- 

 ing to Day,** is made to "a sort of muscular motion of its nostrils 

 which the fishermen say resembles that in the nose of a swine. " In 

 Norway its current name is Steenhider or Stonebiter. 



II. 



The wolfhshes are inhabitants of cold and moderately deep water of 

 the Northern Hemisphere, but in varying degrees, according to species. 

 In the Atlantic, the common species {A. lujms) at times approaches 

 shallow water and sometimes even is left in tide pools, as in the Bay 

 of Fundy and along the coast of Maine at Eastport, where the tides 

 are abnormally great; on the other hand, as Goode and Bean have 

 truly remarked, farther south ''on the New England coast it is 

 frequent in the deep waters" and "is associated with many deep-water 

 forms." The other Atlantic species never goes into shallow water; 

 the spotted wolffish (A. minor) has been found as low down as 200 

 fathoms at least. In the Pacific one of the species (A. lepturus), 

 more even than the A. lupus, ascends into quite shallow water. The 

 common wolffish, however, seems not to be entirely confined for its 

 whole life to a particular locality.'' There is, it has been claimed, a 

 partial migratory movement from deep water into shallow and the 

 reverse. According to T. Wemyss Fulton (1903), there "appears to 

 be a migration of the large catfishes from the deeper water shorewards 

 in winter and spring for spawning." This being effected, a limited 

 reverse movement takes place. "^ Small individuals are rarely taken 

 and it has been assumed that such hide among the rocks and thus 

 escape capture. 



As in the depths, where darkness ever reigns, it is always night, 

 so in the night the common wolffish in shallow waters is most at home 

 and most active. The habits of some, confined in the Manchester 

 Aquarium, specially observed by Saville Kent, were found to be 

 "essentially nocturnal, the fish remaining perfectly quiescent through- 



oLow (George) in his Fauna Orcadensis (1813), was the first to publish the data in 

 question. 



^According to J. Epton, of Grimsby (in Herbert (editor), Fish and Fisheries, 1883, 

 p. 248), " it chiefly inhabits the northernmost side of the Doggerbank, in depths of 

 17 to 45 fathoms. This fish does not appear to roam about." 



cThe Alaska wolfiish {A. lepturus) is especially declared by Turner (1886) to be "a 

 migratory fish, coming to the shores at Saint Michael's as soon as the ice leaves the 

 beach. It remains until ice forms in November. During the period between those 

 ,dates it is quite plentiful. It frequents the rocky ledges, shelves, and points which 

 have vegetation growing near the edge of the water." 



