2740 THE BONY FISHES AND GANOIDS 



each may often be seen in the Lisbon market; their flesh, which is as red as beef, 

 being cut up and sold by weight. The bonito ( T. pelamys} is a smaller and more 

 slender fish, rarely exceeding a yard in length, and frequenting all temperate and 

 tropical seas; while the name of albicore is applied to species like T. albicora of the 

 Atlantic, characterized by the great length of their pectoral fins, some of these fish 

 attaining a length of six feet. Albicore and bonito will follow in the wake of sail- 

 ing ships for weeks together. They prey largely on flying fish ; and Bennett writes 

 of one species that it was interesting <r to mark the precision with which it swam 

 beneath the aeronaut, keeping him steadily in view, and preparing to seize him at 

 the moment of his descent. But this the flying fish would often elude by instanta- 

 neously renewing his leap, and not unfrequently escape by extreme agility." 

 Moseley writes that, when at St. Vincent, he saw a tunny of some twenty-five 

 pounds in weight attracted by baits thrown into the water by some negroes, who 

 kept on casting in fresh ones for some time, in order to give their victim confidence. 

 ' ' A very strong piece of cord, with a hook like a salmon gaff made fast to it, was 

 then baited with a small fish, just enough to cover the point of the hook, and a 

 stout bamboo used as a rod. The cord was hitched tight round one end of it, with 

 about a foot of it left dangling with the hook. One negro held the rod, and another 

 the cord, the bait being held just touching the surface of the water. The fish swam 

 up directly, and took it; the negro holding the bamboo struck sharply, and drove 

 the big hook right through the fish's upper jaw, and both men caught hold of the 

 line and pulled the fish straight out on to the rock." This instance indicates the 

 remarkable boldness and voracity of the tunnies, the fish in question not being six 

 feet distant from the negro holding the pole when it took the bait. Passing over 

 several allied genera, such as Pelamys and Cybiuni, we proceed to a more interesting 

 group of the family. 



The remarkable adhesive disc on the upper surface of the head at 

 once serves to distinguish the sucking fishes, not only from their im- 

 mediate relatives, but likewise from all other members of the class; 

 and it may be mentioned that the development of this disc by means of what is 

 called natural selection presents one of the strongest objections to the acceptance of 

 that doctrine, since in its incipient stages such a structure would be utterly useless. 

 The genus Echeneis, to which all the half-score species of sucking fish pertain, dif- 

 fers from all those noticed above in the absence of finlets; the sucking disc being 

 formed by a modification of the spines of the dorsal, and being composed of a num- 

 ber of transverse plates, varying from twelve to twenty-seven, according to the spe- 

 cies. It is not a little remarkable that there exists in the Indian seas, as also in the 

 tropical Atlantic, a fish (Elacate nigra) closely allied to the sucking fishes, but with 

 the disc represented by a few short and separated spines; and it may be considered 

 certain that this fish is the survivor of the ancestral type from which its more spe- 

 cialized relatives have been evolved. The body of the sucking fishes is elongate and 

 pyriform; the eyes are lateral, or directed downward and outward; and the cleft of 

 the mouth is deep. Villiform teeth are present, not only in the jaws and on the 

 bones of the palate, but generally also on the tongue; the scales are minute; and 

 there is no air bladder. The second dorsal and anal fins are elongated, and the pel- 



