REI) MULLET. 
61 
The Sea-Brea, m’s true home is the Mediterranean 
and the Atlantic outside it: in England and Ireland, 
too, it is common. In winter it keeps to deeper water, 
in spring and during summer it approaches the coasts 
and is met with nearer the surface. Its food consists 
principally of crustaceans and fish, but also of seaweed. 
Now and then, when it collects into shoals near the 
surface, it seems to follow the sardines, and it is some- 
times caught in thousands along with these fish. Most 
often, however, it is taken on night-lines, and the young, 
which during summer and in autumn crowd into inlets 
and harbours where the bottom is overgrown with sea- 
weed, are caught on hooks baited with worms, mussels, 
small fry or bits of fish. According to Risso“ and 
Valenciennes (1. c.) it spawns off Nice from May till 
July. Couch (1. c.), however, found young specimens 
an inch long on the English coast in January. It is 
nowhere * 6 highly valued as food, I believe, though both 
Duhamel and Russo eulogized it in their days; but 
when it can be had perfectly fresh, it is said to be 
considered tolerably good, even in England. 
Fam. MULLIDJE. 
External bones of the head unarmed or the hind corner of the 
Scales large , slightly denticulated, not continued over the dorsal or anal 
dorsal fins quite separate from each other, fairly alike and also resembling the anal fin , which is 
System of the lateral line well developed, but without special cavities in the 
cylindrical or conical teeth on one of the jaws at least, sometimes on the palate as 
with one spinous and, five soft rays. Maxillary bone posteriorly membranous and 
when the mouth is closed. Chin furnished with barbels. Branchiostegal 
Branched rays in the caudal fin at most 13. 
Body somewhat elongate and, slightly compressed, 
operculum produced into a fiat spine, 
fins. The two 
situated under the second dorsal, 
bones of the head. Simple, 
well. Ventral fins thoracic, 
partly concealed by the preorbital bone, 
rays at most 4. 
Cuvier c was the first to suggest the formation of 
a separate family for these fishes, but Bonaparte d the 
first to incorporate it in the system. 
The Mullets or Sea Barbels — the former name 
of Latin derivation and explained by the predominant 
red colouring of these fishes, which reminds one of the 
red shoes worn by the highest Roman officials 6 , the 
latter from their two barbels, which give them a re- 
semblance to the freshwater Barbels — in their struc- 
ture come very near the preceding family, especially 
in the system of the lateral line and the form of the 
teeth. The former, in its development on the head, 
closely resembles that of the Sea-Breams. One or two 
forms of the Mullidce , e. g. of the subgenera Upeneus 
and Mulloides , have a covering of scales on the top 
of the head as far as the snout, up to the point to 
which the upper branches of the intermaxillaries extend 
posteriorly. In others, again, as in the true species 
of Mullus, the top and sides of the head are naked 
throughout the snout, and there, as well as on the pre- 
orbital bone, the preoperculum and the branches of the 
lower jaw, the skin is pierced by pores, one and all, 
as a rule, with raised, or at least distinctly marked 
margin and some of them almost as large as the an- 
terior nostrils. These pores also reappear fairly densely 
on the barbels 7 , the feeling organs of the chin, as Wtn- 
ther 5 ' has also pointed out. Sometimes we may see 
them, especially clearly on the preorbital bones, as holes 
in the exterior walls of the underlying, branched ca- 
nals. In the scales of the lateral line itself the canal 
is generally divided into numerous, finger-like branches. 
The teeth, the different occurrence of which on a, 
greater or less number of the jaw-bones or palatine 
bones formed one of Cuvier’s characters for the sub- 
a Ichth. de Nice, p. 247. 
6 Cf. Valenciennes (1. c., VI, p. 191) and Day (1. e., p. 37). 
c Cov., Val., Hist. Nat. Poiss., vol. Ill, p. 419. 
d Saggio etc., Roma 1832 = Versuch einer methodischen Eintheilung der Wirbelthiere unit lcaltern Blute, Uebers. in Iris 1833 p. 1205. 
e Others derive this name from the Greek gvXXog = lip; but the Greeks called the Mullet TQiyXa. 
f “La surface des barbillons, vue a la loupe, parait toute couverte de petits points saillants serres et fins’’: Cov., Val., Hist. Nat. 
Poiss., vol. Ill, p. 439. 
>J Zool. Dan., Fiske, p. 6. 
