GILPIN OX THE HALIBUT. 23- 



amongst the hosts who people these many fathomed depths. 

 Cod, haddock, pollock, hake, cask or ling, herring, mackerel, 

 cat fish, (A. Lupus) sea perch, (O. Burgal) and squid are fomid 

 in his stomach. In fact every species that inhabit our seas. 

 But we are less prepared for the various mollusks that are also 

 found there. My friend Mr. J. R. Willis, so well known as a 

 conchologist, has kindly given me a list of specimens, which he 

 has at various times taken from their stomachs.* Many of these 

 species must be in beds at the bottom of the ocean and must be 

 torn or rooted from their attachments. We can only suppose 

 there must be shelving banks and inequalities of the surface on 

 whose sides the mollusks bed themselves, and that the halibut 

 thus get beneath them in feeding upon them. Like all our fish 

 they approach the land during the summer months aud retire to 

 the deep soundings during winter. They spawn in June, at 

 least at that time the ovaries are the largest and the spawn 

 escaping the most readily from the female when caught. Small 

 fish of the size of the spread hand are taken both in our shore 

 weirs and also on the banks, showing they spawn in both places. 

 They are seen every month in our fish markets, but the best 

 fishing season is in early spring, on the banks about ninety miles 

 seaward, with sixty to eighty tathoms. The season commences 

 the last of February or first of March ; but the seas are too 

 tempestuous and storms too violent for much to be done at so 

 early a period. The meat when fresh is firm, white, aud well 

 flavored, either boiled or fried in cutlets, or spiced and baked. 

 It does not take salt well. This is not much to be regretted on 



* Note. — The following I have taken from their stomachs frequently uninjured^ 

 apparently just swallowed whole, but sometimes affected by the gastric juice, or elae 

 in fragments. 



Glycimeris, siliqua. 

 Astarte, castanea. 

 Cyprinus Islandicus. 

 Leda sapolita. 

 Pecten, Islandicus. 

 Natica, triseriata. 

 Lunatica, heros. 

 Fusus, decemcostatus. 

 Fusus Islandicus. 

 Fusus pygmaeus. 

 Occasionally I have found the remains of eephalopods, but too much injured by 

 gastric juice to enable me to identify any of them with certainty. 



Yours sincerely, 



J. R. WILLIS. 



