THE SUCKIXG flkVL. POISONOUS FISIT. ^33 



Eix to hvelve inches long, but has no value as a table fish. It is 

 abundant near Nassau, and is sometimes called the Globe fish. 



The Sucking fish has a flattened disk on the ui^per part of its 

 head, into which the first dorsal fin is transformed. This disk 

 is composed of numerous transverse, cartilaginous, movable 

 jDlates. By means of the suction or adhesive power of this disk, 

 its owner fastens to a shark or other free and far-roving swimmer, 

 ''dead-heads " itself about the ocean without any labor or expense 

 to itself, visits distant seas, and forages its supplies from the 

 marine monsters that jorovids it, nolens volens, with a free, un- 

 limited traveling ticket for life. This is the fisher fish to which 

 we have heretofore referred. 



Cutesby says it is a foot iu length, and that its head is equal 

 in size to its body; that " the crown of its head is flat, and of an 

 oval form, with a rid2:e of rising;, running longitudinal and cross- 

 ways to its sixteen ridges, with hollow intervals between, by which 

 structure it can fasten itself to any animal or other substance;" 

 that he has taken "five of them off the body of a shark, which 

 Avere fixed so fast to different parts of its body, that it required 

 great strength to separate them;" that he has "seen them dis- 

 engaged and swimming very deliberately near the sharks without 

 the latter attempting to swallow them." 



Some of the Bahama fish are very poisonous. We were told 

 by a Nassau gentleman that in some cases the question of the 

 safety of eating certain fish depends upon the place where they 

 are caught — the same kind of fish being in one place wholesome, 

 and poisonous in another. Some are said to be safe for the table 

 only when young. It is probable from these facts that the fish 

 are poisoned by their food, but whether that food is of a min- 

 eral nature, (which we are inclined to doubt,) or vegetable or 

 animal, we are not informed. Very likely some localities pro- 

 duce marine vegetable growths which are poisonous to the fish 



