NOTES AND QUERIES. 227 



Thetford. I do not think, however, that they were asserted to be indigenous 

 there. Undertanding from Dr. Taylor, of the Ipswich Museum, that he 

 had found the Natterjack at Bawdsey, I spent some hours there upon a 

 careful search for examples, but without success ; and I have reason to 

 believe, from the reports of others, that the Bawdsey colony is now 

 extinct. — A. B. R. Battye (Oxford). 



[The colony of Rana esculent a near Thetford was discovered thirty years 

 ago (1853) by Prof. Newton, whose account, originally published in ' The 

 Zoologist,' will be found reprinted in Cooke's ' Our Reptiles,' p. 102. — Ed.] 



FISHE S. 



Occurrence of the Wolf-fish in Devonshire. — A fisherman brought 

 me a specimen of the Wolf-fish [Anarrhichas lupus, L.) taken at Teigu- 

 mouth in a herring-net on the 20th March last. Its total length was 

 3 ft. 5f in. Width at the commencement of the dorsal fin, 11£ in. ; 

 width at centre of abdomen, 10^ in.; width just behind the vent, 8 in. 

 Colour almost uniform grey, the black bands only faintly visible. The 

 anal aperture was remarkably large and conspicuous. The stomach con- 

 tained the remains of eight large Whelks (Buccinum undatum), recently 

 swallowed, the opercula being still attached to the muscular feet, but there 

 were only a few fragments of the shells, showing that the fish must some- 

 how get rid of most of the shells after crushing them, retaining the 

 animals. Besides the formidable array of teeth in the jaws and palate, 

 there were three rows or groups of teeth on the lower pharyngeal bone, a 

 fact not mentioned by Gunther, Yarrell, Couch, or Day. I found three 

 specimens of a remarkable Lernean on the gills, but unfortunately lost 

 one ; the other two I put iuto spirits. There was very little smell from 

 the flesh, except the large cheek-muscles, which had a peculiar rank scent. 

 A person who ate some of the flesh, after being cooked, pronounced it very 

 good. Couch mentions one specimen taken off Plymouth, aud that is, I 

 believe, the only previously-recorded specimen which has occurred on the 

 coast of Devon. The figure in Yarrell's ' British Fishes ' appears to have 

 been drawn from the imagination of the artist. Dr. Day's illustration of 

 this species in his ' Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland ' is not so good as 

 the others in that admirable work, and does not look as if it had been 

 taken from a recent specimen, the front teeth being too conspicuous, and 

 placed too vertically instead of the lower ones projecting almost horizontally 

 from the jaw, and their shape is different from those in my specimen. 

 The dorsal fin comes a little too far towards the head, and there is a point 

 on the gill-covers not to be seen in the present individual, but the shape of 

 the head is represented more correctly than in Couch's figure in his 

 ' Fishes of the British Islands,' which, however, shows the form of the body 

 the best. There are no " regular furrows diverging from the eye," as 

 mentioned by Couch, and shown in his figure. The specimen has been 



