MALACOPTERYGII SUBRACHIATI. 227 



branchiae. They are taken along the coasts of almost all countries, and 

 furnish a wholesome and delicious article of food. 



Individuals are sometimes captured whose eyes are placed on the side 

 opposite to that in which they are generally seen, they are then said to be 

 contournes or reversed, others again have both sides of the body coloured 

 alike, when they are called doubles or doubled; it is most generally the 

 brown side which is thus reproduced, though it sometimes happens to the 

 white one. 



The subdivisions of this genus include the Plaice, Flounder, Sole, Turbot, 

 Holibut, &c. 



FAMILY III. 

 DISCOBOLI. 



These fishes, so called on account of the disk formed by their 

 ventrals, form two genera. 



LEPADOGASTER, Gouan. 



The small fishes which compose this genus are remarkable for the following 

 characters. Their ample pectorals having reached the inferior surface of 

 the trunk, assume stouter rays, curve slightly forwards, and unite with each 

 other on the throat by a transverse membrane directed forwards, which is 

 formed by the union of the ventrals. The body is smooth and without 

 scales, the head broad and depressed, the snout salient and protractile; the 

 branchiae, but slightly cleft, are furnished with four or five rays, and they 

 have but a single soft dorsal opposite to a similar anal. 



CYCLOPTERUS, Lin. 



This genus is well marked by the ventrals, whose rays, suspended round 

 the pelvis, and united by a single membrane, form an oval and concave 

 disk, used by the fish as a sucker to attach itself to rocks. The mouth is 

 wide, and its jaws and pharyngeals furnished with small and pointed teeth; 

 opercula small; branchiae closed below, and provided with six rays; pecto- 

 rals very large, and uniting almost beneath the throat, as if to embrace the 

 disk of the ventrals. 



Cyclopterus lampus, L. (The Lumpsucker.) The first dorsal so envel- 

 oped in a thick and tubercular skin, that it has the appearance, externally, 

 of being a simple dorsal hump; there are three ranges of thick conical tu- 

 bercles on each side of it. It feeds on Medusa and other gelatinous ani- 

 mals, particularly in the North. Its flesh is soft and insipid; heavy and with 

 scarcely any means of defence, it becomes the prey of the Seal, Shark, &c. 

 The male is said to keep careful watch over the eggs. 



