FISHES. 271 



backwards, and each armed at its free border with 

 numerous small spines. 



The average length of this species is from six to 

 eight inches. It has no swim-bladder, or sound. Its 

 skeleton is strongly and perfectly formed. The ribs 

 are double, the inner and stronger series being eleven 

 on each side, the outer and more slender, nineteen or 

 twenty. The female is oviparous. The contents of the 

 stomach, in the specimens we examined, were small 

 marine insects, shrimps, and fragments of delicate shells. 



As this fish has no swim-bladder, and as its fins are 

 feeble, and possess only a horizontal action, it is not 

 improbable, that a power of adhering to floating bodies 

 is given to it as a compensation for these physical 

 defects, and that the sucker is only of use as a loco- 

 motive organ, or as an agent by which the fish reposes 

 after the laborious exercise of swimming. The slow 

 and prowling movements of the shark render it par- 

 ticularly eligible either as a resting-place or as a con- 

 veyance for the sucking fish, hence it is usually at- 

 tended by many of these half-parasitic companions. 

 Any convenient floating object is, however, also ac- 

 ceptable : we have seen them adhering to turtle, albacore, 

 whales, and the bottom of ships. 



It is not true that the Remora receives any nutriment 

 through its sucker, or that it in any way injures the 

 animals to which it may adhere : its capacious and 

 well-armed mouth, and the food contained in its 

 stomnch, denote that this fish is as capable of catering 

 for itself as any other species, of more independent 

 habits. The use it makes of its sucker is, indeed, much 

 less than may be supposed: it often merely swims 

 around the body it attends, and only fixes upon it oc- 

 casionally, and for a very short time. 



