OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 87 



ventral region, interrupted by three or four narrow longi- 

 tudinal bands of a stone-grey or pale-bluish hue which 

 extend from the region of the head to the root of the tail, 

 more or less numerous spots of the same tint decorating the 

 elongated dorsal fin. This fish is not of sufficient size nor 

 sufficiently abundant to be used as food, and when caught 

 is usually cut up for bait. A close ally to the Comber is 

 the so-called Giant Perch or Dusky Perch (Serranus gigas\ 

 No. 5, a perfect monster compared with the freshwater 

 representatives of the Perch family, attaining in its full 

 growth to a length of three to four feet, and a weight of from 

 sixty to over one hundred pounds. It is a somewhat rare 

 visitor to our shores. The Mediterranean and Atlantic sea- 

 board, as far south as the Cape of Good Hope, being its more 

 ordinarily frequented habitat. The examples so far cap- 

 tured in British waters were taken at Polperro, Falmouth, 

 Penzance, and other points on the Cornish coast. The 

 small example preserved in spirit in the Day Collection is 

 necessarily a very young one. The Stone Bass (Polyprion 

 cernium), No. 5, is another of the Sea Perches, local and 

 irregular in its appearance on the British coast, and whose 

 headquarters, as in the preceding form, are to be sought 

 in the Mediterranean and other southern seas, where it 

 attains to a size equal to, or it may be even greater than that 

 of the so-called Giant Perch examples of as much and even 

 over six feet in length having been recorded. It has been 

 observed as a peculiarity in the habits of the Stone Bass 

 that it is almost invariably captured in the neighbourhood 

 of floating timbers and other wreckage, which it apparently 

 frequents to feed upon the small fish and various Crustacea, 

 Molluscs, and other animals so abundantly associated with 

 the flotsam of the ocean. In a similar manner these fish 

 will also attach themselves to a vessel, whose bottom after 



