210 AMERICAN FISHES. 



ACANTHOPTERYGII. SCIENID/E. 



THE KING-FISH. 



BERMUDA WHITING. 

 Umbrina Nebulosa ; Agaswz. Umbrina Alburn us 



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 Caro- 

 lina 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 fry. 



His colors on the back and side are dark bluish gray, with lustrous 

 and silvery reflections, and bright many-colored nacrous gleams flitting 

 over him as he dies. His irides are yellow ; 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 ; the preoperculum is serrated 

 behind ; the branchiostegous rays are seven ; the teeth of the upper 

 jaw are long, sharp and rare, in the lower even and crowded. 



First dorsal fin is triangular, with ten spinous rays, the second 

 dorsal has one spinous and twenty-five soft rays, the pectorals thirteen 

 soft rays, the ventrals one spine and five soft rays, the caudal fin 

 has seventeen rays, and has its upper lobe acute, but its lower rounded. 



There is said to be a permanent variety of this fish, Umbrina 

 Cor aides, peculiar to South Carolina, which has two spines to the anal 

 fin, and is marked with nine dark vertical bands on the back. 



