36 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 



The Sturgeon {lAcipenser sturio) 



Fin Formula. Teeth. 



Pectoral : 31 rays, of which the first is very None. 



strong and bony. 

 Caudal: Upper lobe, 39 rays; lower lobe, 



81 rays, whereof sixteen are bony. 

 In all the fins, the rays are generally finely 



denticulated. 



The Sturgeon is the largest fish frequenting British inland 

 waters. It is of noble proportions, attaining sometimes a 

 length of 1 8 feet, and weighing many hundredweights. Frank 

 Buckland received one taken in a deep-sea trawl off Heligo- 

 land, and prepared a mould for making a cast of it. He was 

 prevented by illness from finishing the work, but he has left it 

 on record that this specimen measured 1 1 feet 4 inches in 

 length, and weighed 623 lb. 



1 have found no record of sturgeon so large as this taken 

 in British waters, but while these pages are being prepared 

 for the press, information comes to hand of two consider- 

 able fish of this species. One was taken near the Leven 

 estuary in Morecambe Bay, measuring 8 feet i inch in length, 

 4 feet 8 inches in girth, and weighing 448 lb. The other 

 was caught in the Conway, just below Talycafn Bridge, and 

 differed materially in proportions from the first. Although 

 1 1 inches longer than the first, it girthed only 3 feet 6 inches, 

 and weighed but 320 lb. 



The origin of popular names for wild animals is always 

 interesting to both naturalists and etymologists. Generally they 

 are roughly descriptive, or arise from some conspicuous feature 

 or characteristic. Dr. Skeat, who holds the foremost place among 

 modern English philologists, has traced the name " sturgeon " 

 to a Teutonic source, the same that gave the Anglo-Saxon 

 styrian^ to stir, and interprets it to mean " the stirrer." In 

 Anglo-Saxon the fish was called styria^ just as in Swedish 



