MEAGRE AND DRUM. 151 



fishes Trout and Herring and Whiting, and their children and 

 grand-children, who had no opportunity of knowing what the real 

 Trout and Whiting were like, innocently adopted the names used 

 by their elders. The ultimate result is that modern colonial 

 people visiting England for the first time express surprise at the 

 difference which exists between their own animals and the 

 similarly-named animals of this country, and rather than rename 

 their own, they allude to our British forms as the " English 

 Trout/' the " English Whiting/' and so on. 



The Scisenidse are fishes common near the sandy shores of all ScisenicUe. 

 warm seas, with the soft dorsal much more extensive than the 

 spinous dorsal and the anal fins, the pelvic fins thoracic in position, 

 and with no teeth on the palate. Some of the fishes attain to a 

 great size, and most are edible. Scicena diacanthus is a common 

 fish on the coast of the East Indies, ascending the rivers for a 

 great distance from the sea. The specimen of this species in 

 Table-case 48 is 6 feet 3 inches long. One of the European Meagre, 

 species, Scicena aquila, the Meagre (1101) has an extremely wide 

 range, specimens having been caught on the British coast, the 

 Cape, and Southern Australia. Corvina (562) differs from Scicena 

 in having the second ray of the anal fin strong. 



In Umbrina the snout overhangs the mouth and there is a short 

 barbel under the chin. The Umbrina or Ombre, Umbrina cirrhosa, 

 566, is an important food-fish of the Mediterranean, and in the 

 delicacy of its flavour ranks high ; it was well known to the 

 ancients. Pogonias chromis, 564, is called the Drum or Big Drum Drum, 

 because of the extraordinary sounds which it produces, drumming 

 sounds which can be heard by persons in vessels lying at anchor 

 on the coasts of the United States, where the fishes abound. The 

 sounds are either produced by the clapping together of the pharyn- 

 geal teeth, which are strongly developed, or else by the fishes 

 beating their tails against the bottom of the vessel in order to free 

 themselves from the parasites that infest their skin. The Drum 

 grows to a length of four feet and a weight of 100 lbs. Micropogon 

 (563) differs from Pogonias chiefly in that the pharyngeal teeth 

 are conical instead of being flat-topped and adapted for crushing 

 (see pharyngeal teeth of the Drum, 565). 



The Gerridse (e. g. Gerres, 574, and Equula, 575, Wall-case 14) w a ll- 

 are small, silvery fishes common in tropical seas and frequently case 14. 



