GREA T BRITAIN. 3 1 7 



As food. It is in places dried and also salted, and 

 though rather strongly tasted, is largely used as food in 

 the Hebrides, where it is sold as " Darwin salmon." It is 

 prepared by being cut open and dried, while it is so full 

 of oil that it does not decompose. In the West of England, 

 both fresh and salted, it is a very common article of food 

 with the fishermen. 



Habitat. Coasts of Europe, and much dreaded by fisher- 

 men for the injury it occasions fisheries, not only by the 

 amount it consumes, but because of the loss it occasions 

 in fishing gear. Faxby observes (' Zoologist,' 1871, p. 2553) 



lat at Newfoundland during the last few years it was 



lought to have been " cursed away." 



FAMILY III. Raiidce. 



Rays and skates are largely taken around our coasts, and 



e young are destroyed in numbers by trawlers when of a 

 size too small to be useful as food. It seems possible that 

 in olden times these fish were not much employed, as the 

 Anglo-Saxon word skitan, or to reject, is asserted to be the 

 origin of our term " skate." Other authors derive the name 

 from sceadda, or gliding. The peasantry of Western Ire- 

 land refuse to eat it, however plentiful it may be and how- 

 ever famished they are. It has been suggested that this 

 superstition arises from the resemblance which this fish 

 with its depending fins bears to the human face, and 

 possibly to mediaeval representations of the Virgin Mary. 



These fish, from the nature of their skins, which continue 

 to exude mucus for some days after death, do not take salt 

 well, and are consequently dried by being hung up in the 

 air ; this " sour skate " is universally used in the Highlands 

 and in the Isles, forming a favourite article of diet. 



hagreen may be prepared from the skin of some of 





