292 SALT-WATER FISHES 



The body is covered with spiny scales, and there is a small 

 barbel on the lower jaw. The teeth are small. 



Day mentions two, the larger measuring nearly 6 in., as 

 having been dredged in 500 fathoms in the Faroe and Shetland 

 districts, on the outlying limits, therefore, of the British area ; 

 but there is a later record (1890) of one trawled, also in 500 

 fathoms or thereabouts, off Achill Head, and therefore definitely 

 in British seas. 



Allied deep-water forms, Macrurus l^evis, M. Cielorhynchus, 

 and M. aqualis, were added to the British fauna in 1889, 

 and 1890, by the Irish expeditions of Green and Byrne, 

 who trawled them in 200 fathoms on the Irish coast.* 



One or two rare gadoids remain for consideration. 



The Fork-beard [Pkycis blennoides), known on the Cornish 

 coast as the " Forked Hake," is distinguished by its long, 

 forked ventral fins. It has the dull colouring characteristic of 

 all the cod family, and it also has the barbel on the lower lip 

 possessed by so many of them. British examples have measured 

 been 1 5 in. and 2 ft. Although it seems from all accounts to 

 be least uncommon on our north-east coast, Holt says that it 

 is unknown as a distinct fish to the Grimsby men, who regarded 

 two examples caught in March, 1892, as hybrids between the 

 torsk and haddock, both of which have been described in the 

 chapter on the cod family. 



Day describes it as rare in Devonshire, but records 

 examples from that county. Calderwood mentions one 

 measuring i8|- in. taken on a whiting hook on the hard 

 ground five miles from shore, near Plymouth. This may, 

 however, have been in Cornish waters, from which Couch had 

 previously recorded the species. More recently it was trawled 



* For a detailed description of these rare Macruridce consult Holt 

 and Calderwood, "Report on the Rarer Fishes-Survey of Fishing-Grounds, 

 W. Coast of Ireland, 1890-1891 " (Trans. Roy. Dub. Soc, September, 1895). 



