174 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



dog-fish, crabs, squids, and lobsters have been found in their stomachs by observers of the United 

 States Fish Commission. They often attempt to feed upon each other. The common name refers 

 to the fact that they have been known to swallow live geeae. A fisherman told me he once saw a 

 struggle in the water, and found that a Goose Fish had swallowed the head and neck of a large 

 loon, which had pulled it to the surface and was trying to escape. There is authentic record of 

 seven wild ducks having been taken from the stomach of one of them. Slyly approaching from 

 below, they seize birds as they float upon the surface. They annoy the fishermen by swallow- 

 ing the wooden buoys attached to the lobster pots. Mr. Minot, of Magnolia, Massachusetts, 

 caught one by using his boat-anchor for a hook. 



Although they come thus to the surface to feed, the Goose Fish is emphatically a bottom- loving 

 species. _ "It is adapted," writes the Duke of Argyle, " for concealment at the bottom of the sea 

 for lying perfectly flat on the sand or among the weeds with its cavernous jaws ready for a snap. 

 For more perfect concealment, every bit of the creature is imitative both in form and in coloring. 

 The whole upper surface is mottled and tinted in such close resemblance to stones and gravel 

 and sea-weeds that it becomes quite undistinguishable among them. In order to complete the 

 method of concealment, the whole margins of the fish, and the very edge of the lips and jaws, have 

 loose tags and fringes which wave and sway about amid the currents of water, so as to look exactly 

 like the smaller alga? which move around them and along with them. Even the very ventral fins 

 of this devouring deception, which are thick, strong, and fleshy, almost like hands, and which 

 evidently help in a sudden leap, are made like two great clam-shells, while the iris of the eyes is 

 so colored in lines radiating from the pupil as to look precisely like some species of Patella or 

 limpet. But this is not all ; not only is concealment made perfect to enable the Lophius to catch 

 the unwary, but there is a bait provided to attract the hungry and the inexperienced. From 

 the top of the head proceeds a pair, or two pair, of slender elastic rods, like the slender tips of a 

 fishing-rod^ ending in a little membrane or web which glistens in the water and is attractive to other 

 fish. When they come to bite, or even to look, they are suddenly engulfed, for portals open with a 

 rush and close again portals over which the inscription may well be written: 'Lasciate ogni 

 speranza voi cW entrate.' 1 '" 



From the time of ^Dlian every popular essay on the " Habits of Fish " or " Curious Fishes" has 

 told how the Angler entices its prey with its long tentacles. No one has ever seen the perform- 

 ance, and, although the theory is not altogether incredible, it seems more probable that the tops 

 of these organs are intended by their sensitiveness to warn the fish of the approach of its prey 

 than to act as allurements to attract other fishes. 



The Goose Fish spawns in summer, in the sounds and at sea along the coast. The eggs are 

 very numerous, enclosed in a ribbon-shaped gelatinous mass about a foot in width and thirty or 

 forty feet long, which floats near the surface. One of these ribbons will weigh perhaps forty pounds, 

 and is usually partially folded together, and visible a foot or eighteen inches from the top of the 

 water, its color being brownish purple. The number of eggs in one of them I have estimated at 

 from forty to fifty thousand. The spawning season on the New England coast is in summer. I 

 have observed the floating eggs in July and August, and in the same months young fish two or 

 three inches long, and undeveloped eggs in the parent fish. The young have rarely l>een taken 

 except at considerable depths. Their growth is rapid. The adult is commonly four feet long, 

 weighing from thirty-five to forty-five pounds. 



The Goose Fish is extensively used for baiting lobster pots. Although not commonly eaten, 

 its flesh is very palatable. The full-grown fish will yield from ten to fifteen pounds of good meat. 

 In Italy it is much esteemed as an article of food, and iu parts of Great Britain it is also eaten, the 

 steaks from the neighborhood of the tail being preferred. 



