TION. 



252 COAL COD FISH. Class IT. 



, fresh, yet it is salted and dried for sale ; a person 

 in one year having cured above a thousand at 

 Scarborough. 

 Descrip- The coal fish is of a more elegant form than 

 the common cod fish ; it generally grows to the 

 length of two feet and an half, and weighs about 

 twenty-eight or thirty pounds at most. The 

 head is small ; the under jaw a little longer than 

 the upper; the irides silvery, marked on one 

 side with a black spot. It has three dorsal fins, 

 the first consists of fourteen, the next of twenty, 

 the last of twenty-two rays; the pectoral fins 

 consist of eighteen j the ventral of six ; the first 

 anal fin of twenty-two, the second of nineteen 

 rays. The tail is broad and forked. These fish 

 vary in color ; we have seen some whose back, 

 nose, dorsal fins and tail, were of a deep black ; 

 the gill covers silver and black ; the ventral and 

 anal fins white ; the belly of the same color. 

 We have seen others dusky, others brown, but in 

 all the lateral line was strait and white, and the 

 lower part of the ventral and anal fins white. 



