4904 THE ZooLocist—May, 1876. 
of Yarrell’s ‘British Fishes,’ and with my former example. The 
other was a fine specimen of the great pipefish (Syngnathus acus, 
Linneus), which, as previously mentioned (Zool. S.S. 4754), is a 
rare species here ; it was washed ashore living, and measures fifteen 
inches and a half: the eyes were very prominent, and the irides 
bright yellow. As it was very active when I found it I thought 
I would try to keep it alive, so as to have an opportunity of 
observing its motions when swimming about; accordingly I gota 
large tub full of sea-water, into which I put it: my intentions 
were, however, most unexpectedly defeated by the persistent 
manner in which it kept the whole of its head and about an inch 
of its body out of the water; its attitude was something like that 
of the Hippocampus, as figured in Yarrell; perhaps, as they are 
allied genera, this was its natural mode of resting; and, as its tail 
was touching the bottom of the tub, it might have required a greater 
depth of water than I was able to give it. Of what use can so 
small an anal fin be to these fishes? On the 7th of February the 
crew of a boat, with whom I had gone out to see the lines hauled, 
caught a haddock; this is a great prize here now, as none have 
been obtained for the last ten years, the fish having quite deserted 
the ground, where they were formerly very numerous; this ex- 
ample, however, which I secured-in the hope of getting a treat, 
was worthless, as when cut open it was found to be diseased and 
almost black inside. While | am on the subject of the Gadida, 
I may mention that a very beautiful variety of the ling (Molva 
vulgaris, Fleming) is often obtained here: it is of a pale violet 
colour, irregularly mottled with dark purple, almost black spots, — 
and grows to the same size as the usual kind: it is caught only on 
a particular part of the bank, and is called by the fishermen 
“spotted ling”; they do not, however, consider it a different 
species to the normally-coloured examples. The cod and ling 
fishery here this season has been almost totally ruined by the 
enormous number of dogfish which took up their quarters on the 
bank at the beginning of the season, and have remained during the 
whole winter. They are of two kinds, Acanthias vulgaris, Risso, and 
Scyllium canicula (Linneus); the former being to the latter in the 
proportion of about twenty to one. Every boat comes in full of 
these pests, and I have seen many times over a dozen fine cod and 
ling brought up unsaleable on one line, very often nothing left but 
the back-bone and the head; and so iavenous are these creatures 
