584 Mr. F. Pickard-Cambridge on the 
LVIII.—On the Occurrence of Gobius capito, C. & V., in 
Cornwall, By FREDERICK PicKARD-CAMBRIDGE, B.A., 
TZS- 
[Plate XXX.] 
It is now four years ago since Mr. G. A. Boulenger made the 
interesting discovery of this fine goby at Concarneau and in the 
Gulf of St. Malo (Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 7, vol. iv. p.229, 
1899), a species hitherto recorded only from the Mediter- 
-ranean. It occurred to him at the time that it was quite 
possible that this fish might also be found on our side of the 
Channel, and his surmise was strengthened by the recollection 
that Couch, in his ‘ Fishes of the British Islands,’ vol. ii. 
p- 153, had stated that he had seen gobies of 9 inches in 
length in the rock-pools on the coast of Cornwall, presumably 
near Polperro. These fish, however, this author had referred 
to Gobius niger, Linn., considering that their large size was 
due to their isolation in the deep pools lying above the ordinary 
neap-tides and to the abundance of food found in these places. 
Boulenger communicated his suspicions to Messrs. Holt and 
Byrne, of the Department of Agriculture and Technical 
Instruction for Ireland, who were engaged in a Report on 
the Sea and Inland Fisheries of Ireland, which was published 
early this year (1903), and contains an admirable monograph 
of the ‘* Gobiide,” including some excellent plates. 
For some reason or other, however, the giant goby, 
G. capito, which Messrs. Holt and Byrne refer to in their 
monograph, had not, in spite of a great deal of laborious 
collecting and observation on the coast of Ireland and in 
Devonshire and Cornwall, surrendered itself to science until 
the August of this year, when I was myself fortunate enough 
to find them in abundance at Port Scatho, on the coast of 
Cornwall, between Falmouth and Fowey. 
Mr. Boulenger had often begged me to look out for gobies 
on my sea-fishing expeditions and rambles along the coast, 
and especially urged me, just before visiting Cornwall, to see 
if possible what these large gobies might be. It is curious 
that no one else should have come across them previously, 
because those that Couch records were probably found at 
Polperro ; and if so, they most likely occur all along that coast. 
Holt and Byrne distinctly point out that G. niger is an 
estuarine species, never found in rock-pools, and also that 
the extreme length attained by G@. paganellus, the rock-pool 
