SAURY PIKE. 
355 
pectoral tin is well fitted to guide them, and there they 
crowd on each other as they press forward. Under the 
impulse of terror they spring to the height of several 
feet — leap over each other in singular confusion, and 
then again sink out of sight. But the pursuers again 
shew themselves, and they mount again, and rush along 
the surface for more than a hundred feet in a continued 
effort, without the body for a moment being lost sight 
of, and, as it would appear, by the instant but repeated 
touch on the water of the pectoral fins and those which 
lie along the under part of the body.” It is from the 
appearance which it presents at the surface on these 
occasions, that the English sailors have given this fish 
the name of Sea-mouse. Often enough it leaps out of 
the water into a fishing-boat. When it has entered the 
shallows, it often forgets to retire at the ebbing of the 
tide; and in the Firth of Forth hundreds of specimens 
are then picked up on dry land, with their beaks stuck 
in the sludge. During the Pilchard-fishery it is an 
unwelcome guest, for the fishermen believe that the 
Pilchard has a strong dislike to, or perhaps fear of it. 
We also learn from England that in 1825 numbers of 
Sauries and Pilchards were together enclosed in a Pil- 
chard-seine; and before it was possible to secure the 
catch, thousands of the Pilchards had their eyes gouged 
out by the Sauries, and scores of them were transfixed 
by their enemies’ beaks. These wounds, however, can 
scarcely be dealt intentionally, for the Saury, which is 
smaller than the Garpike, and has a still weaker beak, 
can hardly prey on fishes as large as the Pilchard. 
Its food is composed of small, or even the smallest 
crustaceans or Entomostraca, the larvae of crustaceans 
and, in all probability, other minute creatures that live 
at the surface or among the seaweed. We may also 
infer that small fishes form a part of its food, from 
the fact that it is sometimes taken on the hook. The 
Saury itself is good eating. The spawning-season is 
as yet unknown. 
Like the Garpike, the Saury wanders far out of 
its ordinary habitat, but probably not in shoals. Solitary 
specimens have been taken even in the extreme north 
of Norway. One of these, 245 mm. in length, was 
caught during the summer of 1883 off Gjesvaer, near 
North Cape, and is now preserved in Tromso Museum, 
which also possesses a specimen 230 mm. long, from 
Helgoland", where it was found on the beach in Au- 
gust, 1877. Previously, about 1850, one or two spe- 
cimens, one of which, an example 380 mm. in length, 
is preserved in Christiania Museum, had been taken in 
Christiania Fjord. The Museum of Copenhagen pos- 
sesses one specimen, 255 mm. long, from Iceland, three 
from the Sound, one from the Great Belt (Nov., 1873) 
and two (Oct., 1886) from Agger on the west coast of 
Jutland. In Bohuslan three specimens have been taken, 
one 295 mm. in length, which was forwarded to the 
Royal Museum in 1878 by Baron Cederstrom, Ph. 1)., 
and two obtained by Mr. C. A. Hansson, who handed 
over one of them, 300 mm. in length, to the Museum 
of Upsala and the other, 165 mm. in length, to the 
Royal Museum. Both the last specimens were caught 
in November. A fourth Swedish specimen, 222 mm. 
long, which was taken in the Sound off Raa, in May, 
1862, is preserved in the Museum of Mahno. 
The Saury is thus one of the rarest Scandinavian 
fishes, and consequently cannot be of any special value 
to the fishermen of Scandinavia. The case is the same 
along the west coast of the Continent — on the west 
coast of France, according to Moreau, this fish is ex- 
tremely rare. In England, however, and even on the 
Scotch coast, it apparently occurs in large shoals every 
year; and it is found oftener than in Scandinavia among 
the Orkney and Shetland Islands. 
Subfamily E X 0 C 0 E T I N M. 
Intermaxillary bones furnished with a distinct — though sometimes very thin — lip , and articulating by means of 
nasal processes — which are sometimes very short — with the surface of the front end of the ethmoid cartilage. 
Maxillary bones free and, ivith movable articulation. Snout short , neither of the jaws being elongated 1 . 
This subfamily contains the fishes which most ; fins, and the lower lobe of the caudal fin considerably 
strictly deserve the name of Fhying-fisli , most of them longer than the upper. Some fifty species have been 
having long and highly expansive pectoral and ventral distinguished and distributed among three or four gen- 
a The Norwegian district, not to be confused with Heligoland. 
* In some forms ( Exocoetus mento and Exoc. acutus), however, according to Valenciennes, the tip of the lower jaw is “elongated 
by a little pointed knob.” 
