361 



XI. — The Fish " U chine is Hemora" obtained in Cornwall. — From 

 Mr. Jonathan Couch, F.L.S., &c. 



Eead at a Meeting of the Institution, August 16, 1867, 



HOWEVER common in warmer regions of the ocean, the 

 Remora is so rarely obtained in British seas that it is doubt- 

 ful whether more than a single example, prior to the present, has 

 come, or been conveyed, to our coasts. It is recorded as having 

 been met with in Ireland ; it had been previously reported as ob- 

 tained in Wales, but Mr. Dillwyn, a learned naturalist who lived 

 at the place where it was said to have been found, has expressed 

 his doubt of the accuracy of that report. It is the habit of this 

 fish to fasten itself, by means of the sucking organ on the top of 

 its head, to any large and wandering fish, but, in preference, to 

 some species of the Shark family ; and it was by such mode of 

 conveyance that this specimen was brought to us. This occurred 

 in the first week of June, about fourteen miles south of the 

 Dodman ; and I am indebted for information of its capture, 

 to that observant and obliging fisherman, Mr. Matthias Dunn, 

 of Mevagissey, who failed, however, in his endeavours to pro- 

 cure a knowledge of the precise kind of shark to which it had 

 attached itself, and which seems to have belonged to one of the 

 rarer species. The length of this example of the Eemora was i^ 

 inches; its form was rather more slender, and its colour more 

 dark, than those of which figures are given in my Natural History 

 of the Fishes of the British Islands, — which examples were obtained 

 from a hotter climate than our own. The example now presented 

 to the Museum of the Eoyal Institution of Cornwall is certainly 

 the only existing specimen of this fish that has been obtained in 

 England. The verj curious history of the Remora is given, at 

 length, in the work above referred to, but is too long for quotation 

 here. 



