28o SALT-WATER FISHES 



threatened with danger. Mcintosh quite unnecessarily takes 

 Day to task for holding this opinion, whereas, at any rate in 

 British Fishes, Day merely quotes it as the opinion of 

 " some authors." 



In colour the angler is of a deep brown above, with dark 

 lines and marks, and having the lower surface yellowish 

 white. The ground-colour and markings are both, how- 

 ever, subject to much variation. 



It is usually regarded as a shallow-water fish, but Byrne 

 found it (1889) on the Irish coast in 200 fathoms. Though 

 ordinarily a ground-dweller, the angler is said at times to 

 bask at the surface, and indeed it must even seek its food 

 there, since of the many birds that have been taken from 

 its stomach, cormorants and razor-bills might perhaps have 

 dived to its haunts, but gulls must have been seized at the 

 top of the water. Its stomach can be stretched to an extra- 

 ordinary extent, and its habit is probably to swallow a fish 

 little smaller than itself at intervals, and then, like some 

 reptiles, digest it at leisure. Holt quotes an interesting 

 suggestion, made by a member of the Irish survey, that 

 the fish is able to snap with great accuracy at any object 

 that touches the "bait," so that the angler is a kind of 

 living spring-trap. It is regarded as one of the most 

 persistent natural enemies of the plaice, on which it is said 

 to feed at most seasons of the year. 



It is of little use, save as a curiosity for the museum, 

 though Irish washerwomen are said to use the gall for 

 whitening their linen, and the same organ is said to be 

 employed in Iceland in the manufacture of soap. 



The angler spawns in summer time, the eggs floating in 

 immense sheets on the water, much like the spawn of frogs, 

 though this is not, of course, the reason of its being called 

 " frog-fish," a name it bore long before the spawn had been 

 described. A sheet of angler spawn 36 ft. in length and 

 10 in. wide was once thrown up in July in the Firth of 



