THE WRASSE-LIKE FISHES 



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of the upper jaw, used for holding a shell against the front and side teeth, by which 

 it is crushed. The majority of the wrasses are beautifully-colored fishes, decorated 

 not only with transient iridescent hues on the scales, but likewise with permanent 

 colors formed by the deposition of pigment in the tissues. Some of the species 

 grow to a large size, specimens weighing upward of fifty pounds; and it is these 

 larger species which are most esteemed as food fishes, the flesh of the smaller kinds 

 being of inferior quality. In a fossil state wrasses date from the middle Eocene of 

 Monte Bolca, where remains referable to the existing genus Labrus occur; while an 

 extinct Eocene genus from North America appears to be the ancestral form of the 

 existing blackfish (Tantoga). An allied extinct family is represented by Phyllodus 



STRIPED WRASSE. 

 (One-third natural size.) 



from the Cretaceous and lower Eocene of Europe distinguished by the flattened 

 leaf-like pharyngeal teeth as well as by several other more or less nearly related 

 Tertiary types. 



As it would be quite impossible in our limited space to describe even 

 True Wrasses . 



a few of the numerous genera of wrasses, we must content ourselves 



with saying that these are arranged in groups according to the structure of the an- 

 terior teeth, and devote our remaining observations mainly to the typical wrasses 

 constituting the genus Labrus. In this genus, of which the figured striped or red 

 wrasse (L. mixtus) may be taken as a well-known British example, the body is 

 compressed and oblong in form, with the moderate-sized scales arranged in more 

 than forty transverse rows; the muzzle is more or less sharply pointed; the cheeks 



