The Gray Snapper 45 
The fact that the gray snapper affects com- 
paratively shallow water makes it especially avail- 
able to rod fishermen. It frequents old wharves 
and similar places. It is difficult to describe the 
color of the living snapper. I have taken indi- 
viduals showing great variety of tints, but, as a 
rule, the deeper the water the more brilliant the 
coloring. Some fishes are a dark greenish hue, 
the centre of the scales showing a burnished 
black, the lower portion being a reddish coppery 
hue, very brilliant, giving the entire fish a sug- 
gestion of red golden bronze. Others, and par- 
ticularly large specimens, taken by me at Garden 
Key, where the bottom was gray sand, were 
almost pure gray, suggestive of the specific name 
griseus given the fish by Linnzeus. 
An interesting and very gamy snapper, a valu- 
able food fish, at nearly all the West India 
Islands and Florida keys, is known as the dog 
snapper (Ludzanus jocu). Its habits are similar 
to those of the gray snapper. The latter is 
at the head, so far as game qualities are con- 
cerned, of a large group of snappers, comprised 
in the family Ludcanzdae, and is the largest, but 
its many relatives —and the famous red snapper, 
Lutianus aya — afford excellent sport on the reef, 
