190 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



having occasionally been taken off Sandy Hook, Block Island, and Montauk Point, while it ranges 

 north at least to Cumberland Gulf, latitude 64, and to Holsteinborg Bank in Davis Strait, and 

 a.s far as Disko and Omenak Fiord, latitude 71, on the coast of Greenland, five or six degrees 

 within the Arctic Circle. Along the entire west coast of Greenland they exist, abundant about. 

 Iceland and north to Spitzbergen, in latitude 80. No one knows to what extent they arc 

 distributed along the European and Asiatic shores of the Arctic Ocean, but they have been 

 observed on both sides of the North Cape, in East and West Denmark, and from the North Cape, 

 latitude 71, south along the entire western line of the Scandinavian Peninsula, in the Skager 

 Rack and Cattegat, but not, however, so far as I can learn, in the Baltic. Halibut are occasion- 

 ally seen in the southern part of the North Sea and in the English Channel: south of latitude 50 

 their range in the Eastern Atlantic appears to cease. There is yet some question whether it is 

 found iu Southern Ireland, but some of the largest individuals recorded from Great Britain were 

 taken in the Irish Sea, off the Isle of Man. 



On the Pacific coast the Halibut, which has been shown by Dr. Beau to be identical with that 

 of the Atlantic, ranges from the Farallone Islands northward to Bering Straits, becoming more 

 abundant northward. "Its center of abundance," says Bean, "is in the Gulf of Alaska, par- 

 ticularly about Kodiak, the Alexander Archipelago, and the Shumagins. Large halibut are 

 numerous about the Seal Islands, but the small ones have been killed by the seals. I have 

 heard from good authority of their capture as far north as Saint Lawrence Bay, near East Cape, 

 in Siberia. It has several times been reported from off the heads of Marcus Bay, Siberia." It 

 is occasionally taken off San Francisco and about Humboldt Bay. In the Straits of Fuca and in 

 the deeper channels about Puget Sound it is taken in considerable numbers. 



A large halibut bank exists in the mouth of the Straits of Fuca, about nine miles from Cape 

 Flattery in a northwesterly direction, and their capture is an important industry to the Coast 

 Indians. 



The Halibut is emphatically a cold-water species. That it ranges nine or ten degrees farther 

 south on the American than on the European coast, is quite in accordance with the general law of 

 the distribution of fish -life in the Atlantic; indeed, it is only in winter that Halibut are known to 

 approach the shore to the south of Cape Cod, and it is safe to say that the temperature of the 

 water in which they are at present most frequently taken is never, or rarely, higher than 45, and 

 seldom higher than 35, and often in the neighborhood of 32. Its geographic range corresponds 

 closely to that of the codfish, with which it is almost invariably associated, though the cod is less 

 dependent upon the presence of very cold water, and in the Western Atlantic is found four or five 

 degrees in the Eastern Atlantic at least two nearer the Equator, while the range of the two 

 species to the north is probably, though not certainly, known to be limited relatively in about the 

 same degree. In the same manner the Halibut appears to extend its wanderings further out to 

 sea, and iu deeper and colder water than the cod. Although observations on this point have 

 necessarily been imperfect, it seems to be a fact that, while cod are very rarely found upon the 

 edge of the continental slope of North America, beyond the 250-fathom line, Halibut are present 

 there in abundance. 



COMMON NAMES. The name of this species is quite uniform in the regions where it is known, 

 though, of course, subject to certain variations in the languages of the different countries, and 

 its characteristic features are so unmistakable that it is rarely confounded with other species, 

 the only fish for which it is ever mistaken seeming to be the Turbot of the European coast, with 

 which it sometimes interchanges names. In Scotland it is said that the Halibut is frequently 

 called the Turbot, and Yarrell has expressed the opinion tliat in instances where it had been 



