ME. F. DAY ON SOME BRITISH FISHES. 317 



Couch laid claim to this fish having been discovered as a rare 

 visitor to our shores, informing his readers that the authority 

 was E. Lakes, Esq., of St. Austei's, from whom he received the 

 specimen, " with the assurance that it had been obtained from a 

 fisherman of Mevagissey, on the south coast of Cornwall, and 

 that this man affirmed he had taken it in a net at some rather 

 considerable distance from land." On inquiry this fisherman 

 asserted " that a fish exactly similar had been taken about two 

 years before by a fisherman of the same place ; and another was 

 viewed at leisure, and particularly described to myself, but not 

 taken, by an ordinary observer, who watched it in shallow water 

 further east on the same coast." 



Having received an invitation to Mevagissey in order to see 

 the Pilchard-fishing in August 1880, I gladly availed myself of 

 the opportunity, and among other subjects inquired about the 

 amount of credit to be attached to this fish as a British specimen. 

 It appeared that the example had been parted with to Mr. Lakes 

 by a sailor, who was also a fisherman, named Matthew Barron, 

 and that he had been mate of a vessel, ' The Roseland,' which at 

 the time inquiries were first being instituted happened to be lying 

 in St. Austel's Bay. The master, on being shown Couch's figure 

 of the fish, at once expressed his opinion that his mate had 

 brought the example to England in salt, and which he re- 

 membered supplying to him for the purpose of preserving it in. 

 Barron on being spoken to declined any information, except 

 that it came from a long way oft* land. Subsequently the figure 

 from Couch was taken round to the various fishermen in Meva- 

 gissey, one and all of whom denied ever having seen such a 

 fish captured at that port, although most of them had seen 

 such a one brought by Barron from " foreign parts." 



My informant sent Mr. Couch the foregoing information, and 

 I was shown his letter received in reply. Mr. Couch observed, 

 on March 2nd, 1868, " After all such a fish may have wandered 

 to our coasts is not beyond the bounds of belief, although its 

 native country is far away ; but the fact of a doubt among your 

 neighbours throws some suspicion on what had been reported to 

 Mr. Lakes." 



That this fish may wander to our shores is perhaps hardly 

 more improbable than the advent of Pammelas perciformis ; still 

 the fact that Couch's specimen had been captured at Mevagissey 

 is as unreliable as that of Holocanthus tricolor, reported last 



