THE WRASSES 191 



members of this family, and the six genera given in the 

 foregoing list are distinguished for the most part by incon- 

 spicuous characters determined only on close examination. 

 One such ground of distinction is the number of dorsal spines — 

 nine in the rainbow wrasse and as many as a score in the 

 scale-rayed kind. Another determining character is the 

 number of scales along the lateral line — over fifty in the 

 rainbow wrasse and less than forty in the connor. The 

 distribution of the teeth is also of some importance ; these lie 

 in a single row in Labrus and Centrolabrus, and in a band in 

 Ctenolabrus and Acantholabrus . In the last three genera 

 {Centrolabrus, Ctenolabrus and Acantholabrus') there are imbricate 

 scales on the gill-covers. Most young wrasses have a serrated 

 edge to the front part of the gill-cover, and this character is 

 apparently retained by the connor throughout life. 



All the wrasses dwell among weed-covered rocks in either 

 shallow or moderately deep water, usually the former. At the 

 entrance to Dartmouth Harbour, for instance, there are some 

 submerged rocks with very long weed, and there, many years 

 ago, the writer used to catch very large wrasses several pounds 

 in weight. Many of them, too, follow the crabs into the 

 crab-pots, and are in turn made use of as excellent bait for 

 those crustaceans. 



The Striped, or Cuckoo, Wrasse {Labrus mixtus) is one of 

 the handsomest of the wrasses in our seas, and affords a parallel 

 case to that of the dragonet, for the sexes differ so strikingly 

 in colour that they were commonly regarded, on widely 

 separated coasts, as distinct species. The error was in the 

 first instance corrected by Scandinavian biologists. The male 

 was known as the blue-striped, the female as the three-spotted, 

 or red, wrasse. The three black blotches of the female, 

 situated on the edge of the back just before the tail, are absent 

 from the male. As so often observed in animals that differ in 

 colour according to their sex, the immature male follows the 

 colouring of the female. In both sexes the ground-colour is 



