THE GOBIES, SUCKERS, AND BLENNIES 169 



The most remarkable feature of this fish is its teeth. It 

 combines in its mouth the two chief types of fish teeth, adapted 

 for every conceivable use. It has, so to speak (though their 

 structure is different from that of elasmobranch teeth), the 

 pointed teeth of male rays, and the flat, crushing teeth of the 

 females. Thus it can seize the most slippery fish and it can 

 crush the hardest shells. It has a conical series in the jaws, 

 and large rows along the middle of the palate. A wolf-fish 

 of 6 ft. in length must therefore be a formidable creature, 

 little less fearsome than a shark of similar size. Its natural 

 diet is said to consist of crabs and whelks ; but there is abun- 

 dant evidence of this either being insufficient or else being 

 varied to suit a changing taste, for the fish is constantly 

 tearing the nets and robbing the long lines of the Scotch 

 and Norwegian fishermen. Now and again, indeed, it is 

 captured on the haddock lines. In colour the wolf-fish is 

 dull grey, with dark vertical bands down the sides and yellow 

 stains on the marginal fins. Though commonly regarded as 

 a dweller in moderately deep water, taken only on lines that 

 are shot at some distance from the land, it would seem that 

 the wolf-fish must sometimes venture close to the coast, for 

 it is thrown ashore by storms every winter. 



It spawns in the cold months, its pale yellow eggs, equal 

 in size to those of the salmon, lying in masses on the bottom. 

 The wolf-fish lays the largest demersal egg found in our seas, 

 and the larva, also large, has been compared with that of the 

 salmon. Professor Mcintosh therefore tabulates the chief 

 differences in interesting fashion, and these are the spheroid, 

 colourless yolk, blunt snout, and continuous marginal fin of 

 the young wolf-fish, contrasting with the elongated, reddish 

 yolk, projecting snout, and intermittent fin of the young 

 salmon. The differences between the adult and intermediate 

 stages persist to a later period of growth, for whereas the adult 

 salmon loses the bars that marked the parr stage, it is the young 

 wolf-fish that lacks the bars which later develop in the adult. 



