AXACANTIIS.- 



-FISIIES- 



-Macuoui:ids. 



115 



the surface more frequently than most other Gadoids, 

 and is often taken by a bait towed after a vessel which 

 is making some way through tlio water. The young 

 Coal-fish, under the various local names of Sillock, 

 Piltock, Kuth, Harbin, Cuddon, Seth, and Ley, afford 

 excellent sport to the angler, as they leap eagerly to 

 a wliite feather, and may be caught 

 as fast as the line can be thrown. 

 The Lythe, or Pollack {Merlangus 

 pollachius), the Hake {Merliiccius 

 vuhjaris), the Ling [Lota molva), 

 and the Torsk {Drosmius vulr/aris), 

 are also good fish, the last named 

 being most abundant among the 

 Zetland Isles; and the Hake and 

 Ling on the Cornish coasts. Several 

 otlier members of the family, of 

 smaller size and less value, inhabit 

 the British seas. The Burbot {Lota 

 vidrjaris), which is found in a few 

 English rivers, is the only Euro- 

 pean fresh-water species. In the 

 temperate and colder jiarts of the 

 southern hemisphere, there are also 

 various representatives of the family. 

 In Rupert's Land a very nutritious 

 bread is made of the eggs of a 

 Burbot mixed with a little wheatcn 



F.MiiLY v.— MACROURIDS. 



This family is composed of a single genus of fishes, 

 Mticrourus of Bloch, or Lcpidoleprus of Risso, and 

 belongs, like the Gadoids, to the Tlioracic sub-order 

 of Anacanths. By many the genus is annexed to the 

 Gadoids, instead of being made the type of a separate 

 family, to which distinction, however, its peculiar 

 dermal skeleton seems to give it a strong claim. Species 

 exist in the Greenland and Norwegian seas, in the 

 Mediterranean, and on the coasts of Australia, but 

 none have been detected in the British Channel, per- 

 liaps from their being inhabitants of deep water beyond 

 the action of trawl nets. They seldom exceed a foot 

 in length. They have the turbinals or nostril-bones 

 largely developed, so as to form, by the apposition of 

 their vertical plates, a mesial crest on tlie snout, 

 which is flanked on each side by a wing-like lateral 

 process. These bones, in conjunction with the broad 

 reverted pre-orbitar plates, support an acute snout. 

 The body is highest and fullest in the pectoral region, 

 and is compressed posteriorly, tailoring gradually into 

 the thin acute pointed tail, at whose tip the broad 

 anal and long second dorsal unite, without any separate 

 caudal being interposed. Teeth villiform ; mouth 

 inferior, behind the projecting snout, with a barbel 

 on the chin. The premaxillarios border the anterior 

 half of the mouth, and are protractile directly down- 

 ward?, their long pedicels moving in the vault of the 

 turbinals. The scales are armed on their discs with 

 acute spines, and the head is encased in bones with 

 scaly and muoiferous surfaces. The Branchiostegals 

 are six. 



Family VI.— PLEURONECTIDS. (Flat-Fisiies.) 

 Plate G, figs. 31, 32, 33. 



This family is distinguished among vertcbrals by a 

 want of symmetry— the two sides behig not only dis- 





■r«rj^#^"^^' 







Polar Floimder (I'leuroncctes glaciali^.) 



similar in colour, but having the lateral fins differently 

 developed, and the bones of the base of the skull and 

 face so twisted that the two eyes are placed one over 

 the other on the coloured side of the fish. On this 

 account Prince Charles Bonaparte named the family 

 Ilcterosomata (diverse sides), and it had previously 

 been denominated Pleuronectidie, or " Swimmers on 

 the side." In these fishes the body is very greatly 

 compressed, so that both the ventral and dorsal edges 

 are acute, and the sides are circumscribed in the forms 

 of round, oval, ovate, or elliptical discs, the paler side 

 being beneath in the usual position of the fish when 

 swimming, and simulating the belly. The dorsal fin 

 edges the whole back, and in some genera runs for- 

 ward over the forehead to the nostrils, tlie anal fringitig 

 the ventral edge in the same manner. Sometimes 

 these two fins unite at the point of the tail ; in other 

 species they t;dl short of the end of the back-bone, and 

 a good-sized caudal is interposed. Branchiostegals, 

 six. No air-bladder. There is no want of symmetry 

 in the spinal column posterior to the scapulo-coracoid 

 arch ; the interneural and interhtemal spines are in 

 pairs, each pair supporting one dermo-neural, or dermo- 

 hcemal spine. 



The genera arc Plalessa (Plaice, Fluke, Flounder); irijyjio- 

 fflossits (lloUbut); Pscltii Cfurbot, Brill); Zem/nplenis (Top- 

 knot); .S'ofcra (Sole); }r,mocliir; Athirus; Pliii/usiii ; Paralk-lhi/i 

 (Gii-ard); Plalidilhjs (^Uirard); Plcurcmichthys (Girard); Vara- 

 phrys (Gh-ard); aud PaettidUlnjs (Girard). 



The Flounder family, or Plouroncctids, are of much 

 importance in the fish-diet of England, France, and 

 Germany, as they keep longer after death than other 

 fish, and can therefore be safely transported to a 

 greater distance inland. In certain districts of Eng- 



