298 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 



naturalists of the sea-scorpion and father-lasher {scorpius and hubalis) of Euro- 

 pean seas. The kaneeok is described as a most voracious fish, and this character 

 is fully maintained by the individuals from Newfoundland, whose stomachs con- 

 tained the vertebral columns of several small fish, some entire crabs, the peelings of 

 potatoes, and other substances. 



DESCRIPTION. 



Form. — Head large, forming more than a third of the length of the fish, caudal included; 

 its height at the nape is about a fourth of the length, exclusive of the caudal, and its breadth 

 there, when the gill-covers are closely shut, scarcely exceeds its height. Eyes lateral with a 

 slight inclination upwards, and placed their own diameter apart. The upper border of the 

 orbit is much elevated and terminates posteriorly in a rounded, obtuse, somewhat uneven knob, 

 about the size of a grain of duck-shot. At the foot of this, and so covered by skin as not 

 always to appear distinct, there is a smaller tubercle which forms the commencement of a low 

 even ridge, that separates the temples from the crown of the head, and terminates on the nape 

 by a tubercle similar to the orbitar one. The space bounded by the orbitar and nuchal tuber- 

 cles of each side is flat, and in the female nearly square, but in the males it is narrower, the 

 posterior tubercles being nearer to each other than the anterior ones. The space between the 

 orbits is much depressed and is bounded anteriorly by the nasal spines and the prominent ends 

 of the intermaxillary pedicles which play between them. In cottus octodecim-spinosus the 

 place of the four tubercles on the top of the head is occupied by compressed, curved spines. 

 There are velvet-like plates of teeth as usual on the intermaxillaries, lower jaw, and vomer, 

 but none on the palate bones in Grcenlandicus. 



Spines. — None of the spines project, distinctly through the skin in the ordinary state of the 

 fish, though all are subulate and acute. The nasal ones are small. The principal one at the 

 angle of the preoperculum is stout, straight, awl-shaped, and only about one-sixth of the total 

 length of the head, or rather shorter than the diameter of the orbit ; it is inclined a little 

 upwards ; an equally stout spine, only half as long, springs from its base beneath and inclines 

 slightly downwards ; while the lower limb of the preoperculum ends just behind the articula- 

 tion of the lower jaw in a spinous point directed forwards — the number of preopercular spines 

 being the same as in cottus scorpius. The anterior under spinous angle of the suboperculum 

 points downwards, but there are no serratures nor spines on the edge of this bone, which is 

 continued backwards by a thin, strap-shaped, flexible, cartilaginous process forming, with the 

 integuments in which it is imbedded, a triangular, but not. very acute tip to the gill-cover. 

 The opercular spine is much concealed by the skin, and falls nearly half an inch short of this 

 tip. The scapular spine, though shorter than the opercular one, to which it is parallel, is 

 fully as stout. The tip of the short humeral spine coincides exactly with the tip of the gilb 

 cover. There are no serratures on any of the spines, or bones of the head or shoulder, in 

 which respect this species differs from buhalis ; while by there being only two, and not three, 

 strong spines at the angle of the preoperculum, it is distinguished from the quadricornis of 

 Linnaeus and my hexacornis. 



Fins.— Br. 6— 6; P. 17; V. 1/3; D. 10/— 17; A. 13; C. llf. In two specimens. 

 6—6; 17; 1/3; 10/— 18; 12; llf In one ditto. 



