228 MARKETABLE BRITISH MARINE FISHES 



live in fresh water, but as will be explained below cannot 

 propagate in it. 



Food. No very extensive investigation has been made of 

 the contents of the stomachs of flounders ; the marine researches 

 of recent years have not been adapted to throw light on this 

 point in the history of this fish. During the Irish Survey 

 twelve adult flounders, ioi to 15 inches long, taken in Downies 

 Bay, County Donegal, north-west of Ireland, contained sand- 

 eels, one shrimp, several Idotea linearis (a common crustacean), 

 and one Terebella, a tube-forming annelid. The observations 

 of Mr. Thomas Scott on board the Garland were strikingly 

 unfruitful with regard to the food of this species ; of seventy- 

 five specimens examined in the Firth of Forth during four 

 years only two contained animals that could be recognised, in 

 one case worms, in the other a Solen or razor-shell. The 

 reason of this is simply that the Garland's stations were in the 

 seaward part of the Firth, where only spawning flounders could 

 be taken, and when spawning the fish do not feed. Buckland 

 (Report, 1879) states that he found in flounders mussel spawn, 

 by which he perhaps means young mussels, small shrimps and 

 worms in sand. Yarrell gives aquatic insects, worms, and small 

 fishes as the food. In the Plymouth aquarium flounders feed 

 on rag-worms {Nereis} and all other marine worms with great 

 eagerness, and will also eat scallops (Pecteii) and shrimps, and 

 other small Crustacea. 



Buckland (loc. '/.) in describing the flat-fish fishery in More- 

 cambe Bay, says that the flukes are not present there in the 

 winter time, that in frosty weather they, especially the white 

 flukes or flounders, go off into deep water and come back again 

 in fine weather. But it will be found by reference to the reports 

 of the Superintendent of the Lancashire Fisheries District 

 that the migration of flounders in winter is very limited, and 

 amounts to no more than a departure from the marginal 

 grounds between tide marks, to the deeper channels, not a 

 complete removal from the estuaries and bays. This is shown by 

 the fact that although stake-netting for flounders is abandoned 

 in winter, numbers are caught even in January in fish trawls in 

 Morecambe Bay. The most important migration is that of the 

 spawning fish now to be considered. 



The male flounders according to Dr. Fulton's data arc more 



