BURBOT AND ROCKLING. 141 



The Burbot or Eel-pout, Lota vulgaris, 483, is a fresh- water Burbot, 

 member of the Cod family. The skin is unpleasantly slimy, and 

 has small scales which are embedded so as to give the surface a 

 pitted appearance. The colour varies considerably in different 

 localities. There is a single barbel which hangs from the middle 

 of the chin, and from which the French name Barbotte and the 

 English Burbot, meaning "bearded," have arisen. As in the 

 Ling there are two dorsal fins, the base of the second covering 

 half the entire length of the animal and being balanced below by 

 the anal, which, however, is shorter in the base. In England the 

 Burbot grows to 1 or 2 feet and attains a weight of 2 or 3 lbs., 

 but in the Rhine it grows much larger, sometimes weighing as 

 much as 30 lbs. In Alaska it grows to 60 lbs., such a fish being 

 not less than 6 feet long. The Burbot is of a retiring disposition, 

 and in the daytime lurks in holes and beneath stones. It is 

 largely a nocturnal feeder and subsists on small fishes. Its flesh 

 is said to be excellent, but it shares with the Pike and Barbel 

 the disadvantage of harbouring the young form of a tape-worm 

 {Bothriocephalus) which can complete its growth in the human 

 body if it is not killed in the process of cooking. The Burbot is 

 widely distributed over Central and Northern Europe, extending 

 eastward to India, and is also found in North America. In 

 England it is very local ; it occurs in the Trent and other rivers of 

 the eastern part of England, but not in the Thames. 



While in most of the Cod-like fishes there is a single barbel, in Rockling 

 the Rocklings the number is increased. The commonest British 

 Rocklings are the Three-bearded Rockling, Motella tricirrhata, 

 486, and the Five-bearded Rockling, Onus mustela, 487 ; small 

 fishes, with the front dorsal fin reduced to a narrow, delicately- 

 rayed fringe, more or less concealed in a longitudinal groove. 



The Greater Fork-beard, Phycis blennioides, 482, though Fork- 

 common in the Mediterranean and in the North Atlantic, is only 

 occasionally caught off the British coasts ; the exhibited specimen 

 was caught at Fleetwood, in Lancashire. There is a single barbel 

 on the chin, and the pelvic fins are reduced each to a single long 

 ray, forked at the extremity, looking like a forked barbel and 

 probably serving the same purpose. 



The series of " Cod-fishes " on exhibition ends with the Torsk, Torsk. 



