54-2 LIST OF FISHES 



Skipper. It seems to be rare in the southern or 

 English seas \ but it is not uncommon in the north 

 of Scotland, and almost every autumn it enters the 

 Frith of Forth in considerable shoals. Here it is 

 named Gowdnook, Gowdanook, or GaufnooU, and 

 sometimes Egypt-herring. It appears to be a stu- 

 pid inactive fish. When the sauries run up our 

 Frith in numbers, they do not, like other fishes, 

 ' retire from the shallows at the ebbing of the tide, 

 but are then found by hundreds, having their long 

 noses stuck in the sludge, and are picked up by 

 people from Kincardine, Alloa, and other places. 

 Mr Pennant mentions, that great numbers of sau- 

 ries were thrown ashore at Leith by a storm, in 

 November 1768. — This fish is very indifferently 

 figured by Pennant ; it is pretty correctly repre- 

 sented by Mr Racket, in the u Linnean Transac- 

 tions," vol. 3. In this last case, however, as well 

 as in the former, the specimen seems, unluckily, 

 to have had the points of the long slender jaws 

 broken off, probably by accident in the carriage 

 inland. When complete, they are bent a little 

 upwards, like the bill of the avoset : so striking, 

 indeed, is the resemblance, that to Mr Racket's 

 specific character # , after the words " rostro subu- 



* " Esox, Saurus. Rostro subulato, maxillis medio 

 hiantibus. 



<c Dorsum viridi-coerulescens, Venter argenteus. 



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