356 PROSE HAIilEUTICS. 



or less varietyj according to the latitude. ' Flat-fishj' says 

 Mr. Yarrell, ' are found to diminish as the degrees of 

 northern latitude increase : in England^ there are sixteen 

 species j at the parallel of Jutland, Denmark, and the 

 islands at the mouth of the Baltic, thirteen ; on the coast 

 of Norway the number is ten ; at Iceland it is reduced 

 to five, whilst Greenland possesses only three species.* 

 With many of its members (though possibly with not 

 quite so many as ourselves) the ancient world was fami- 

 liar, and on a select few of these we shall now offer some 

 remarks. We ought here, if heraldic rights or precedence" 

 at table were alone consulted, to direct attention first to 

 the turbot; but as modern ichthyology has displaced 

 great turbot (rhombus maximus) for vulgar plaice (pla- 

 tessa vulgaris), we must consent, as we are writing neither 

 a cookery-book nor the heraldry of fish, to foUow Cuvier 

 rather than Soyer or Moule, and give an undeserved 

 priority to dabs and flounders, reserving turbot and soles 

 for a second course. Of the common plaice-fish (platessa 

 vulgaris), though unlike most members of the finny tribe 

 his body presents a lozenge ready chequered for quarter- 

 ing, the annals of English heraldry make no mention ; 

 and that indefatigable antiquarian Mr. Moide is obHged 

 to refer his readers to a Danish family hight Bukens, 

 who have adopted three platessse naiant on an argent 

 bend, in an azure field, in their armorial bearings. Hav- 

 ing given this fish brevet rank, we have but little to say 

 about him : not being a Mediterranean species, he was 

 unknown to the ancients ; his bright orange spots have 

 procured him some partisans, particularly on the Sussex 

 coast, where these brilliant parallelograms have obtained 



* We do not know the number of exotic plevironects in warTner 

 waters than om- own — ^what proportion, for instance, English spe- 

 cies bear to those of Indian Seas. In the Mediterranean markets 

 the variety does not appear ^rimij/aeje so considerable as our own. 



