PLATE XLII. 
characters of both. We first observed one of this species in ^ 
trawling net, on the sandy shore of South Wales, among a parcel of 
Soles and other flat fish. Since that period we have seen it occa- 
sionally exposed for sale in the London markets, to which we are 
informed it is brought from Brighton, and other ’places on the coast 
of the Western counties. 
The form of this fish is oblong : above, the colour is obscure, 
blackish, or dusky brown ; beneath white, and both above and beneath 
is perfectly free from spots. In comparison with the size of the body 
the head is small, but in particular the mouth is remarkably so, and 
the lips are a little protruded. Exactly over the pectoral fin, the 
lateral line takes a very gradual curvature, after which it proceeds 
along the body to the tail in a straight direction. — ^This being the 
true Smear Dab, Mr. Pennant was certainly misinformed at the fish- 
mongers in London, which he speaks of, where he was told a fis^ 
corresponding with the lilt of the Cornish fishermen, was commonly 
known in the Menopolis, by the name of Smear Dab. The Cornish 
Kit is not unknown to us, and we have reason to believe it to be one 
of those kinds of flat fish, that is scarcely ever brought to the London 
markets. So far also as our own enquiries have extended, the fish- 
mongers call the species we are now describing, the Smear Dab, a^d 
do not seem to recognise any other fish by that name. 
Neither of the described species of the Pleuronectes genus, 
Gmelin’s Systema Nature, answers to the description of our fish* 
That to which it appears to approach the nearest, is the P. liman<5id^® 
of that Author, but in one verj' striking particular our species diffh'^* 
so essentially from that fish, that if it be described correctly, we hav® 
no hesitation in admitting them to be distinct. The mouth in limat^^' 
