274 PLECTOGNATHI. 



moon-fish, " because not only round and sHning by nigbt, but having the shape 

 of the crescent betwixt its little pectoral fin and eye " (Borlase, N. H. Cornwall, 

 p. 268). Molebut. Heulbysg byrr, Welsh, Be Maanvisch, Dutch. La Lune, 

 French. 



Habits. — Mr. Gosse (Zool. 1852, p. 3579) records one taken at Ilfracombe. 

 " It was slowly moving at the time of its discovery, with a waving motion from 

 side to side, ' like a man sculling a boat,' to use the comparison of the sailor who 

 helped to take it : the back fin appearing above water. The fish permitted the 

 boat to come close up without exhibiting alarm, nor was he even disturbed when 

 her side came into contact with his bulky person. The fellows made a bowline- 

 knot, and slipped it over his head, tightening it before his dorsal and anal, so that 

 the knot came in the middle of his side. Thus they hauled him in, not without 

 a wetting, for with a flapping action of his ample fins (again a sort of sculling) he 

 scooped up the water, and threw it over them, and into the boat." 



This fish appeared in large numbers along the southern coast of England in 

 1850, and " a comparison of dates and longitudes of the captures would lead to a 

 supposition that the course fallen by these strange fishes was from west to east, 

 and at a very slow rate" (Zoologist, 1850, viii, p. xi). Couch (Misc. 1868) 

 observed that a fisherman infoimed him of a fact he vntnessed close at hand in a 

 smooth sea. A fish about two feet long, and about the same depth of body, which 

 was bright white, leaped above the surface to what he supposes might be the 

 height of two feet, when it fell down flat on its side. He never saw any fish like 

 it except the common sun-fish. The only remarkable thing about it is its leaping 

 out of the water, and although a fisherman of several years' standing, he never 

 saw a sun-fish do this in any other instance. Mr. Dunn on the contrary asserts such 

 to be not uncommon, and due, he believes, to its being attacked by some other fish. 



Major Parlby (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1849, p. 6) refers to one (now in the British 

 Masenm) which he remarks was almost daily seen in West Bay, Dorsetshire, 

 sometimes sailing about slowly with half its dorsal fin above the surface of the 

 water, sometimes moving with great rapidity, playing about and splashing the 

 water violently, or blowing like a whale or grampus. As it generally kept off 

 and on between the mackerel and the shore, the fishermen attributed their ill- 

 saccess with the shoals, which never left the deep water, to the presence of this 

 unusual visitor ; and it is remarkable that on the day after its capture, they took 

 upwards of 20,000 fish. It got entangled in the nets, and forty fishermen co-operated 

 to drag it ashore ; even here its vigour was so great that it dashed about the 

 pebbles, according to the fishermen, like a shower of grape. It expired in about 

 three hours, after uttering " hideous groans" like those of a horse dying of the 

 staggers. In other instances the sounds these fishes utter, when gaffed or hooked, 

 have been compared to sighs, or even to the grunting of swine. Coralline frag- 

 ments were observed in the mouth of one ; in another, the claw of a minute lobster, 

 but generally merely some mucous substance has been recorded from its stomach. 



Means of capture. — When basking or lying on the surface of the water it 

 occasionally permits a boat to approach very closely, and even allows itself to 

 be touched without showing any fear. Dr. Neill informs us that he possessed 

 one which a sailor lifted out of the sea into his boat. The sun-fish has been known 

 to suffer itself to be secured with comparative ease by means of a boathook, or to 

 be harpooned or gaffed. In some instances it has exerted itself to escape, which it 

 does along the surface, and often with considerable speed. On October I7th, 

 1856, one was brought up with the lead line of H.M.S. cutter Woodlark, at the 

 mouth of the Frith, off the Isle of May. The line had passed over one of its fins. 

 The fish was secured with a boathook, and weighed about 600 lb. 



Baits.- — Couch (Mss. Journal, 1869) records how a fisherman from Polperro 

 was fishing with a line over the stern with a hook baited with a laslc, a slice cut 

 from near the tail of a mackei'el, when a sun-fish took the bait. It was captured 

 and was of good size. Another instance has been thus recorded by Fal, in the 

 Field (April 17th, 1880). His son last autumn captured one weighing 53 lb. It 

 took a red eel. 



' The sun-fish of the wctt coast of Ireland is the '' basking shai'I<.' Selaclie maxima. 



