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L O P H I U S. 



including the Mediterranean and the Baltic ; and 

 thus many opportunities of observing it occur. 



It is exceedingly ravenous, and most indiscriminate 

 in its feeding ; and the passage from its mouth to its 

 stomach is so short and wide, that if the large mouth 

 is opened, the contents of the stomach may often be 

 seen, and live fishes taken out of it. Its fishing habit 

 is, however, the most curious part of its economy ; 

 and it appears to make use of the little silvery pennon 

 upon the anterior spine of its head much in the same 

 manner as an angler makes use of a painted minnow, 

 or other spurious bait. It lies in the mud at the bot- 

 tom, and stirs that up by the motion of its pectoral and 

 ventral fins. Many of the flounders, and other ground 

 fishes, resort to any spot where the mud is stirred, be- 

 cause the stirring of the mud brings up those animals 

 on which they feed. The stirring by the angler has 

 this effect, and it also conceals the fish itself, the 

 colour of which, with the exception of the penon, is 

 by no means conspicuous. This p^non is played in 

 all directions just above the surface of the stirred 

 mud. The smaller fishes approach it, and attempt to 

 seize it as a bait ; but the angler, from the structure 

 of its fins, springs up with great velocity, and speedily 

 lodges the beguiled fish in its capacious maw. This 

 is a singular habit, and has been often descanted on ; 

 but perhaps the cause of its beinsr more a matter of 

 wonder than many other habits of animals which have 

 passed without admiration, and indeed almost without 

 notice, is the fancied resemblance which it has to the 

 art of catching fish as sometimes practised by man. 

 This resemblance is only fancied, however, and not 

 real, for nature furnishes the angler with its rod and 

 bait, and also with the instinct which guides it in the 

 use of them, without knowledge or contrivance of any 

 kind upon its part. 



The following quotations, as given by Mr. Yarrell, 

 from the manuscripts of those accurate observers, Mr. 

 Couch and the late Colonel Montagu, contain some 

 of the most characteristic traits of this singular fish : 

 " It makes but little difference," says Mr. Couch, 

 " what the prey is, either in size or quality. A fish- 

 erman had hooked a cod-fish, and while drawing it up 

 he felt a heavier weight attach itself to his line ; this 

 proved to be an angler of large size, which he com- 

 pelled to quit its hold by a heavy blow on its head, 

 leaving its prey still attached to the hook. In ano- 

 ther instance, an angler seized a conger eel that had 

 taken the hook ; but after the latter had been en- 

 gulfed in the enormous jaws, and perhaps stomach, 

 it struggled through the gill aperture of the angler, 

 and in this situation both were drawn up together. I 

 have been told of its swallowing the large ball of 

 cork employed as a buoy to a bulter, or deep sea line ; 

 and the fact this implies of its mounting to the sur- 

 face is further confirmed by the evidence of sailors 

 and fishermen, who have seen it floating and taken in 

 with a line at midwater. These fishes sometimes 

 abound, and a fisherman who informed me of the cir- 

 cumstance found seven of them at one time on the 

 deck of a trawl boat ; on expressing his surprise at 

 the number, he was told that it was o uncommon 

 thing to take a dozen at once." 



"When this fish is taken in a net," says Montagu, 

 " its captivity does not destroy its rapacious appetite, 

 but it generally devours some of its fellow prisoners, 

 which have been taken from the stomach alive, espe- 

 cially flounders. It is not so much sought after for 

 its own flesh, as for the fish generally to be found in 



its stomach : thus, though the fishermen reject the 

 fish itself, they do not reject those that the fish has 

 collected. 



" A female examined measured three feet three in- 

 ches ; the breadth across the body, at the pectoral 

 fins, fifteen inches ; within the teeth, on the lower 

 jaw, is a loose skin of a brown colour, like the back of 

 the fish, forming a sort of bag, which probably assists 

 in preventing the escape of its smaller prey. A male 

 examined was three feet five inches long. When this 

 fish was suspended by the head, the contents of its 

 stomach were readily seen, and I perceived several 

 cuttle-fish. The sexes are distinctly marked by ex- 

 ternal appendages, as in some species of Raia. 



Another species of angler (L. parvipennu), is men- 

 tioned by Cuvier as being found, though much more 

 rarely, on the coasts of France ; and there is some 

 probability at least of its having been seen in the 

 Channel. It is of less size than the more common 

 one, and has the second dorsal fin much lower ; there 

 is also a difference in the vertebra of the spine ; the 

 common species having thirty articulations, while this 

 one has only twenty-five. Some other species have 

 been enumerated by writers on the natural history of 

 fishes ; but they have been described from single 

 specimens, which had been kept some time previously 

 to their examination by the describers, and therefore 

 but little dependence is to be placed on the accounts 

 that are given of them. 



CHIRONECTES forms the second subgenus of these 

 singular fishes. Like the anglers properly so called, 

 these have five rays on the head, of which the first is 

 slender, and furnished with a sort of crest or penon at 

 the top, while the others are margined by a membrane, 

 which often extends partially from the one to the 

 other, and gives this part of the organisation their form 

 of a fin. In the whole genus, indeed, those rays on 

 the head are of the same consistence as the rays of 

 fins, and they are articulated in the same general 

 part of the body, namely, on the dorsal line, as pro- 

 duced along the middle of the head. Whether en- 

 tirely free or furnished with membranes, they are 

 therefore to be considered as portions of the first 

 dorsal. Tire body and head of those fishes are both 

 very much compressed; their mouths open vertically; 

 and the gills, which consist of four rays in each, have 

 no external opening, except a small hole behind the 

 pectorals. Their body is often studded with fleshy 

 appendages. Their air-bladder is of large dimensions ; 

 their intestinal canal is of mean length, and not fur- 

 nished with caecal appendages. Their stomach is of 

 vast size ; and many of them have the power of inflat- 

 ing it with air, as is done by the tetradons. On land 

 their pectoral fins assist them in creeping, like a kind 

 of feet ; and they can perform this species of motion 

 better than even the anglers. It is said that upon 

 occasion they can live for two or three days out of 

 their native element ; and they very much frequent 

 those floating banks of sea-weed which abound in the 

 great eddies of the tropical oceans, nor are they 

 found any where but in the tropical seas. They are 

 much smaller than the common angler, the compres- 

 sion of their body is in the contrary direction, and 

 their colours are more brilliant. 



L. Histrio. This is a species not exceeding nine 

 inches in length, of a yellowish orange, and mottled 

 with brown. It is found in the tropical parts of both 

 oceans, generally near the sea-weed already alluded 

 to ; and the singular antics which it plays in leaping 



