TORSK. 
565 
the Eels. The nucleus is very eccentric, sometimes 
extremely small, but sometimes, even in the largest 
scales, very large. In the Torsk, as in the Eels, we 
find the body marked with vermiform grooves, as it 
were, at the spots where small scales are set in rows, 
for the greater part concealed in the skin, e. g. on the 
occiput and the front part of the back. The lateral 
line does not pierce any scales; but most of the scales 
that lie under or nearest its pores are more or less 
irregular and oblique. Still, it is fairly distinct, with 
its ramified pores, especially in front, where, on the 
abdominal part of the body, it runs in a very long 
arch from the posttemporal region, above the gill-cover, 
to a point some way behind the perpendicular from 
the beginning of the anal tin. It then runs fairly 
straight or with a number of angular sinuations, along 
the middle of the side to the tip of the base of the 
caudal tin. 
The coloration in old specimens is light gray with 
a dash of chocolate colour, growing paler downwards 
and shading into the grayish white colour of the be ny- 
The tins at the base are of the same colour as the body, 
but out towards the margin on all the vertical fins this 
colour is interrupted by a black band, which at the 
extreme margin is exchanged for white, pure or with 
a slight yellowish tinge. These black and white bands 
are broadest on the dorsal and caudal tins and on the 
hindmost part of the anal fin, narrowest on the rest of 
the anal fin. The pectoral fins are to a greater or less 
extent yellowish, the ventral blackish at the top. The 
iris is bronze-coloured on a silvery white ground. In 
young specimens the yellowish colour also extends to 
the body and the bases of the vertical fins, on each 
side of the body in the form of five or six broad, more 
or less sharply defined, transverse bands, one of which 
lies under the pectoral fin. In this coloration we find 
a distinct resemblance to the Lings, though the juvenile 
characters are here much more persistent, just as in the 
structure of its fins the Torsk proves to be a far less 
differentiated (more original) form than the Lings. 
In the internal organs there is no essential dif- 
ference from the other Codfishes. The abdominal ca- 
vity extends back to a line with about the seventh ray 
of the anal fin. The air-bladder is long and thick- 
walled, firmly united to the transverse processes of the 
abdominal vertebrae. The pyloric appendages are rather 
few: Lilljeborg gives their number as 8, while in a 
specimen 64 cm. long we found 15. In this female, 
which was caught in August, in Trondhjem Fjord, the 
ovaries were thin, almost ribbon-shaped, and about half 
as long as the abdominal cavity, and contained almost 
microscopically small eggs. 
In the cranium we remark the flat forehead 
and occiput, with the occipital ridge as it were flat- 
tened at the upper margin and extended on the same 
plane as the top of the head, which behind (at the 
occipital surface) is as it were suddenly cut short at 
right angles, the squamosal bones ( ossa pterotica) pro- 
jecting only slightly further back than the mastoid 
bones ( ossa epoticn). The former bones send out, for- 
wards and inwards, converging towards the middle of 
the forehead, up to the suture between the closely 
united frontal bones, two broad, flattened, osseous ridges 
which evidently correspond to the thin osseous canals 
that run forward at the same spot in the Tadpole Fish, 
and which probably contain, like the latter, a muciferous 
duct. In other respects the structure of the cranium 
is Gadoid, but the surface of the top of the head and 
the occipital ridge are finely punctated in a charac- 
teristic manner with pores. The intermaxillary bones 
most closely resemble those of the Hake and the Tad- 
pole Fish, but are shorter (about 2 / 3 as long as the 
maxillaries), the lobate process, which has the same 
form and lies in the same backward direction as in 
these two species, rising above the posterior third of 
the bone, and extending almost as far back as the bone 
itself. In the gill-cover apparatus the operculum is of 
the Gadoid type, with an angular incision at the hind 
margin; but the lower corner is the more elongated 
and the stronger, in which respect the Torsk is the 
direct opposite of the Tadpole Fish, where the upper 
corner of the operculum (which is itself remarkably 
long) is greatly elongated and pointed. The pelvic bones 
are composed chiefly of the two terete prongs, which 
meet at a somewhat obtuse angle, behind which lies the 
thin, osseous lamina with articular surface for the rays. 
The Torsk (Sw. Lubben — Lubber) has long been 
taken with long-lines on the coast of Norway together 
with Halibut and Ling. Thus it probably leads es- 
sentially the same life and lives generally at the same 
spots as these fishes. It occurs in the same manner 
off Iceland and on the north-east coast of North Amer- 
ica, according to Brown-Goode, from lat. 65° to 42° N. 
The Swedish Royal Museum possesses a specimen from 
Greenland, probably from Claushavn. Whether the spe- 
cies occurs off Spitsbergen — as has been stated and as 
71 * 
Scandinavian Fishes. 
