270 SCIENIDiE. 



THE KING FISH. 



BERMUDA WHITING. 



Uinbrina Alhurnus. Umhrina Nehulosa — Agassiz. 



This admirable fish, which was formerly very abundant in the 

 waters of New York and its vicinity, very few ever wandering so 

 far as to Boston, is becoming daily less frequent. On the 

 coasts of Carolina and Florida, where it is still taken in vast 

 numbers, it is known absurdly as the Whiting, a fish to which 

 it bears no resemblance. 



It is perhaps the gamest of all the shoal salt-water fishes, and 

 the angler regards the King Fish in his basket much as the 

 sportsman looks upon the Woodcock in his bag — as worth a 

 dozen of the more easily captured and less worthy hj. 



His colours on the back and side are dark bluish grey, with 

 lustrous and silvery reflections, and bright many-coloured 

 nacrous gleams flitting over him as he dies. His irides are 

 yeUow ; his dorsals, caudal, and pectorals are dusky olive brown, 

 the former the deepest; the ventrals and anals pale yellow. 

 There are several dark oblique bands on the back, broken 

 toward the tail, and a dark horizontal stripe, more or less 

 distinct, from the pectorals to the tail. 



The body is long, cylindrical, and slender ; the scales round, 

 the lateral line parallel to the back ; the snout is long but 

 blunt ; the operculum has two strong flat spines; t\\Q pre-opercu- 

 lum is serrated behind ; the branchiostegous rays are seven ; the 



