Percesoces and Rhegnopteri 223 
as sharks would be. The long, knife-like teeth render them 
very destructive to nets. The numerous species are placed 
in the single genus Sphyrena, and some of them are found in 
all warm seas, where they feed freely on all smaller fishes, their 
habits in the sea being much like those of the pike in the lakes. 
The flesh is firm, delicate, and excellent in flavor. In the larger 
species, especially in the West Indies, it may be difficult of 
digestion and sometimes causes serious illness, or “‘ichthyosism.”’ 
Fic. 176.—Barracuda, Sphyrana barracuda Walbaum. — Florida. 
Sphyrena sphyrena is the spet, or sennet, a rather small 
barracuda common in southern Europe. Sphyrena borealis of 
our eastern coast is a similar but still feebler species rarely 
exceeding a foot in length. These and other small species are 
feeble folk as compared with the great barracuda (Sphyrena 
barracuda) of the West Indies, a robust savage fish, also known 
as picuda or becuna. Sphyrena commersoni of Polynesia is a 
similar large species, while numerous lesser ones occur through 
the tropical seas. On the California coast Sphyrena argentea 
is an excellent food-fish, slenderer than the great barracuda 
but reaching a length of five feet. 
Several species of fossil barracuda occur in the Italian 
Eocene, Sphyrena bolcensis being the earliest. 
Stephanoberycide.—We may append to the Percesoces, for 
want of a better place, a small family of the deep sea, its 
affinities at present unknown. The Stephanoberycide have the 
ventrals 1, 5, subabdominal, a single dorsal without spine, and 
the scales cycloid, scarcely imbricated, each with one or two 
central spines. The mouth is large, with small teeth, the skull 
cavernous, as in the berycoids, from which group the normally 
formed ventrals abdominal in position would seem to exclude it. 
Stephanoberyx mone and S. gilli are found at the depth of a 
mile and a half below the Gulf Stream. Boulenger first placed 
