512 



B L E N N Y. 



and they have the irides reddish orange. There are 

 four filaments over the eyes, forming' a double crest 

 fringed on both sides. The dorsal fin has only one 

 lobe, and the first ray is short. The jaws are of 

 equal length, and each furnished with an even row 

 of teeth. There is a very characteristic spot, of a 

 black colour, extending across the fourth and fifth 

 rays of the dorsal fin. This species is found both in 

 the Mediterranean and the Atlantic ; but it is very 

 rare as a British fish, and found only on the southern 

 shores. 



Blennius gattoruginc. This species has only two 

 filaments over the eyes, and one lobe in the dorsal 

 fin. The body is reddish, the fins marked by oblique 

 bands of brown ; the eyes elevated above the line of 

 the crown, and with orange irides. This species is 

 also very rare as a British fish, and found only on 

 the outh and south-west coasts. It reaches to about 

 seven inches in length. 



Blennius padnicornis, has the appendage over the 

 eye divided into smaller filaments for the greater 

 part of its length, and only one dorsal fin. The head 

 is small, the eyes projecting, with the irides reddish, 

 and near the crown of the head. The jaws, of equal 

 length, covered with an even row of teeth each. 

 This species also inhabits the Mediterranean and 

 the Atlantic. Its flesh is said to be better than that 

 of most of the genus ; but it has been occasionally 

 confounded with the species immediately preceding. 



The remaining species of the genus have not the 

 produced filaments over the eyes so prominent as 

 those which have been enumerated ; but they have 

 a sort of membranous enlargement on the crown ; 

 and it is somewhat curious that this appendage to 

 the heads of these fishes, enlarges and puts on a 

 bloom of colour in the pairing season, in the same 

 manner as those on the heads of various species 

 of birds. There is a farther analogy, though it is but 

 faintly shadowed out by the observations which have 

 yet been made ; 9ir " the laws of the fishes," are an 

 obscure, though far from an uninteresting part of 

 natural history. The birds which have this seasonal 

 bloom in the fleshy appendages of the head, and not 

 merely in the brighter tints of nuptial feathers, are 

 generally, though not all, polygamous ; and there is 

 some reason to believe that the viviparous, or rather 

 that the ovoviparous blennius, in which this seasonal 

 . enlargement and bloom of the crest are most con- 

 spicuous, are also polygamous. On the other hand, 

 birds which bloom only in the feathers, and fishes 

 which bloom in the fins, or the spots on the skin, as 

 is the case with most of the spawning fishes, are 

 chiefly monogamous. Thus there seems to be in 

 two classes of vertebrated animals, which are very 

 unlike each other in their forms, their haunts, and 

 their habits, some similarity in the part of the bodj r , 

 on which the external sign of the most important 

 of their physiological actions makes its appearance. 

 But the subject has been so little studied in the case of 

 fishes, that inferences from it are by no means safe. 



Blfiinhis galcrita (crested or hehneted blenny). 

 This species has only one lobe in the dorsal fin ; it 

 is spotted and rayed with blue, and has a black eye- 

 shaped spot behind the eye. The appendage from 

 which it gets the appellation of crested, is an elevated 

 duplicature of the skin which crosses the top of the 

 head, and to which it can communicate some motion. 

 It is found in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and 

 is supposed to be rather more dispersed northward 



than some of the others. It is about seven inches 

 in length, and a very active little fish, frequenting 

 the rocks and shores, but very difficult to be caught 

 with the hand, in consequence of the slipperiness of 

 its body from the mucous secretion. The ground 

 colour on the upper part is usually brown, and tluit 

 on the under part bright green and black ; but the 

 colours are understood to vary in different indi- 

 viduals, and in the same at different ages and different 

 seasons. It is not improbable that these differences 

 have caused it to be multiplied into several species ; 

 and the same has probably been the case with some 

 of the others. This one is very tenacious of life 

 after it is out of the water, which is accounted for by 

 the smallness of the gill openings, and the mucous 

 covering of the skin. We have elsewhere had occa- 

 sion to remark (in the article AN ABAS) that as long 

 as the gills of a fish can be kept so moist that all 

 their filaments are covered with a coating of water, 

 the fish will, unless for the drying of the surface of 

 its body, live and breathe out of the water. This is 

 a proof of what was said in the article AIR, about 

 the impossibility of fishes decomposing water so as 

 to obtain the oxygen out of its conifxisilion. They 

 merely breathe the air which is contained in the 

 water in a state of mechanical mixture ; and thus it 

 there is a complete coating of water through which 

 the air must come to the breathing apparatus, it 

 matters less whether that coating be the fiftieth part 

 of an inch or fifty feet, so that it is entire over the 

 whole apparatus, and no air can reach that but 

 through the aqueous coating. Those surface fishes 

 which pant and die almost the instant that they are 

 exposed to the air, always have the gill openings 

 large and free, and of course the air speedily ^o dries 

 the gills that they are unfit for performing their 

 function. We shall notice only one other species. 



Blennius pholis (common blenny, viviparous blenny 

 or viviparous gunnell of some authors). This species 

 has no appendages to the head, and the crest is little 

 elevated, though it is subject to the seasonal bloom 

 of colour already alluded to. This species has the 

 gape wide ; the upper jaw advanced a little in front 

 of the under one. The teeth pointed, strong, and 

 closely set. The opening of the nostrils is in a sort 

 of tube; the facial line very vertical : the eyes large 

 and prominent ; and the irides of a reddish colour. 

 The cavity of the belly is very short. The dorsal 

 fin has only one lobe ; but there is a depression in 



Blennv. 



the middle. The general colour is olive brown mar- 

 bled with paler spots and black, some of which are 

 very minute ; the under part is yellowish. It attains 

 the length of twelve or fifteen inches. 



This species is common upon most parts of the 



