672 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



base of the caudal; vertical fin closely spotted with darker; 

 head above thickly speckled ; body sometimes (" irwrnatus ") 

 entirely immaculate. The wrymouth or ghostfish has been taken 

 from Labrador to Long Island sound. It is recorded by Linsley 

 in his catalogue of the Fishes of Connecticut. The species grows 

 to a length of 24 inches or more. According to Dr Smith, it 

 is very rare at Woods Hole Mass. A specimen from Woods Hole, 

 now in the National Museum, was taken about 1875. Sep. 18, 

 1896, an individual 18 inches long was caught there in a fyke 

 net set in Great harbor. In Massachusetts bay the fish is also 

 rather rare. Storer, in his History of the Fishes of Massachusetts, 

 1867, mentioned seven specimens: one from Nahant, one from 

 Dorchester, one from Provincetown, three from Massachusetts 

 bay; the seventh was from a beach in Nova Scotia. The U. S. 

 Fish Commission collected seven specimens on the coast of Mass- 

 achusetts previous to 1879. There is an albino form of this fish, 

 of which four individuals were known prior to 1879. One of 

 these was obtained at Marblehead and another at Swampscott. 



Family AN ARHICH ADIDAS 



Wolf Fishes 



Genus ANARHICHAS (Artedi) Linnaeus 



Body moderately elongate, covered with rudimentary scales; 

 head scaleless, without cirri, compressed, narrowed above, the 

 profile strongly decurved; mouth wide, oblique; premaxillary 

 not protractile; jaws with very strong conic canines anteriorly; 

 lateral teeth of lower jaw either molars or with pointed tuber- 

 cles; upper jaw without lateral teeth; vomer extremely thick 

 and solid, with 2 series of coarse molar teeth; palatines with 

 one or two similar series; gill membranes broadly joined to the 

 isthmus; no lateral line; dorsal fin rather high, composed en- 

 tirely of flexible spines which are enveloped in the skin; anal 

 fin lower; caudal fin developed, free from dorsal and anal; no 

 ventral fins; pectoral fins broad, placed low; air bladder present; 

 no pyloric caeca. Northern seas. 



