﻿All the others are used as food for man. but only two species arc the 

 object of a special fishery, viz. "Pleuronectes platessa and Sulfa vulgaris, the 

 rest are taken only when they are caught by chance; among these it is 

 particularly Rhombus maximus & Urn's, Hippoglossus vulgaris, and Pleuro- 

 nectes microcephulus & cynoglossus which are of a somewhat greater impor- 

 tance as a commodity, though also Pleuronectes limanda <('• tlesus in some 

 of our smaller seas may be sold at the local markets. 



Of them all the plaice (Pleuronectes platessa) is by far the most im- 

 portant article of trade, and all our llat-lishfisheries are therefore in familiar 

 language called plaice-fishery. 



The Plaice (Pleuronectes platessa). 



(With U tallies. 



We need not study the plaice in open nature very closely in order 

 to perceive the striking difference in the size of litis species of fish in our 



various sens, a matter with which every fishmonger is perfectly well ac- 

 quainted. That the plaice in the < 'attegat is sometimes very large, particularly 

 on the deep sea, and that it is very small in the Baltic, is among fisher- 

 men a well-known fact; also, that the distribution of the fish within the 

 same sea is such, that the large ones are found in certain regions, the 

 small ones in other parts. Still more remarkable seems the fact that 

 ripe specimens <>t plaice are scarcely ever seen in certain parts of the 

 (.'attegat, for instance at the Skaw, while they are often met with at An- 

 holt. Also this is a tiling with which the fishermen are well acquainted. 

 - In order personally to get the opportunity of seeing a number of plaice 

 in the breeding-time (winter) from different places east of the Skaw I bought 

 a number of fish from the fishermen in the winter 1892, and examined 

 their size (length)*) as well as the degree of development or ripeness of their 

 sexual organs. The result of these researches is represented in table I. 



When only so few small specimens are represented in this table, the reason 

 is that the fishermen cannot catch such with the fishing-apparatus they em- 

 ployed. Which sizes the fishermen on the whole are able to get in their 

 fishing-apparatus will lie mentioned afterwards. 



In table I , signifies that the fish are ripe or near the spawning. 



* When nothing else is said, the length is always understood as the distance from 



the tip of the silent to the tip of the caudal tin. 



