220 
gattoruginb. 
and its range of action is usnally confined to the neighbourhood 
of rocks and stones not far from land; where it keeps close to 
the bottom at the depth of a few fathoms. It does not often 
take a bait, but this appears to arise from the fact that the 
ground it haunts is rarely fished over except by those whose 
pursuit is for crabs and lobsters; and in their pots it is so 
commonly taken, that in the season of this fishery it not unfre- 
quently happens a few examples are drawn up in every one. 
A fisherman informed me that he has thus caught as many 
as fifty in a day. They are not thought of as food, although, 
according to Lacepede, they are acceptable for, the table; but 
our fishermen are accustomed to use a degree of cruelty, by 
thrusting their ordinary skewer through the gills of the fish 
w'hilst yet alive, and so hanging it up in the pot for bait. It 
will continue alive in this state for two or three days, if not 
before devoured by the captive crab or lobster; to which it is 
believed that they are a welcome morsel. Its own food appears 
to be indiscriminate, but perhaps with a preference for the 
smaller crustaceans; but various sorts of bivalve shells and 
portions of star-fishes— the common jointed coralline and brown 
sea-weeds have been found in their stomachs. There cannot be 
a doubt also that they are enticed to enter the fatal crab-pots 
by an appetite for the fishy bait contained within them. 
About the end of May they are found large with roe, the 
grains of which are some of them a mulberry and others a lead- 
colour. Numbers of young ones of very small size are also 
found at the same season. 
It appears to be the habit of this fish, as it is of the Common 
Shanny presently to be described, and the Crested or Montagu’s 
Shanny, to employ their pectoral and ventral fins as organs of 
feeling; and also in the place of hands or feet in crawling among 
the rocks with but little action of the other parts of the body. 
For this purpose these organs are well supplied with nerves and 
accompanying blood-vessels; and especially there is well developed 
a series which, as analogous to those possessed by animals of a 
higher order in the scale of existence, an anatomist would 
denominate the axillary plexus; which unite together and again 
divide as in something of a net-work, some of the branches 
penetrating through the bones of the pectoral fins, that both 
sides may be sufficiently endued with sense; the separate rays 
