230 NATURAL HISTORY OF ORKNEY. 



Before they can be dressed, the skin must be taken off, 

 which is prickly about the head and fins. 



The Saury. 



Pen. Tour, 1st ed.p. 284. 



LAST year (1775), such a glut of these fish set into the 

 head of Kerston Bay, that they could be caught in pailfuls. 

 Numbers were caught, and heaps flung ashore. Our seamen 

 called them Garfish, and said they were frequent on .the coast 

 of America. They were remarkable for a set of false fins be- 

 tween the back and tail-fin, and between that and the anal 

 below. They differed in bulk, but were from nine to twelve 

 inches long. The mouth was like the bill of a bird, horny, 

 and projected into two recurved mandibles. The colour on 

 the back a dark green ; the belly silver-coloured. 



No man living near the place where they set in, remember- 

 ed any of the kind in these seas ; so that it is probable they had 

 drove out of their way, and not knowing how to recover it, 

 had run among these isles, where many of them perished, and 

 very few of the shoal got to sea. 



THE END. 



Printed by G. Ramsay & Co. 

 Edinburgh, 1812. 



