134 MARKETABLE BRITISH MARINE FISHES 



of the ground, especially Crustacea. In the aquarium these fish 

 lie still and apparently asleep or half asleep in the daytime and 

 move about at night. They hunt by smell. It seems somewhat 

 surprising that the common or gray skate should feed largely on 

 fish. It is easy to understand that it can feed on bottom fishes, 

 and these do form great part of its food, but pollack, whiting, 

 and mackerel are also found in its stomach, although its shape 

 would appear to be eminently unsuited to their capture. 



The food of fishes in their young stages is necessarily different 

 from that of the adults. Mention has already been made of the 

 minute living particles swallowed by the delicate newly-hatched 

 larvae -of bony fishes when living in the open or surface waters. In 

 a successful endeavour to rear larval herring at Kiel it was found 

 that at first they ate the larvae of small molluscs, and when they 

 grew a little larger, began to take copepods which soon formed 

 their entire food. Copepods also form a large proportion of the 

 food of other young fishes. On the Lancashire coast young 

 plaice inch to 2 inches long were found to be feeding principally 

 on minute Crustacea, and about half of the crustaceans in the 

 stomachs were copepods ; the others were young shrimps and 

 sand-hoppers, and part of the food was small bivalves and worms. 

 It was also found in Loch Fyne that cod and coal-fish from i^ 

 to 3 inches long were feeding almost entirely on copepods. 



