OF THE UNITED STATES 



69 



pounds, and in these, as in all other varities or kinds of electric 

 fishes, the body is without scales and smooth. Upward of thirty 

 species of Rays and Skates are found upon our United States 

 coasts, but man has no special use for any of them. The fleshy 

 flaps of the big Barndoor Skate, however, have been used for 

 food; the fishermen salting them down at Portsmouth, New 



FIG. 8. 



Fig. S. Torpedo(7\ occidentalis). 



FIG. 9. 



RAYS AND SKATES. 



Fig. 9. Barndoor Skate (Raia Icevis). 



FIG. 10. 



Fig. 10. Sting Ray (Trygon xttbina).. 



Hampshire, and the fashionable restaurants in New York City 

 serving them upon their tables. (Fig. 9). The enormous Devil- 

 fishes are Rays that may measure over thirty feet from tip to tip 

 of their lateral pectoral fins; and in another place I have de- 

 scribed the conflict I once witnessed in Key West harbor between 

 one of these great Rays and a U. S. gunboat. The latter had to 

 slip her anchor and call her crew to quarters in order to protect 

 herself against the fury of the fish's onslaught, and being carried 

 out to sea. 



Skates and Rays spend most of their time upon the bottom, 

 and when disturbed they swim off for a short distance, over the 

 sand or mud, in an undulatory manner, by using the pectoral fins. 

 Voracious in the extreme, they consume quantities of Crustacea 

 and mollusks of various kinds. By their powerful jaws and pecu- 

 liar dentition, a big Ray can crush a hard-shelled crab in short 



