Anacanths. FISHES. Macrouhids. 1 15 
the surface more frequently than most other Gadoids, 
and is often taken by a bait towed after a vessel which 
is making some way through the water. The young 
Coal-fish, under the various local names of Sillock, 
Piltock, Kuth, Harbin, Cudden, Seth, and Ley, afford 
excellent sport to the angler, as they leap eagerly to 
a white feather, and may be caught 
as fast as the line can be thrown. 
The Lythe, or Pollack {Merlangus 
pollachius), tlie Hake [Merluccius 
vulgaris), the Ling {Lota rnolva), 
and the Torsk {Brosmius vulgaris), 
are also goo4 fish, the last named 
being most abundant among the 
Zetland Isles; and the Hake and 
Ling on the Cornish coasts. Several 
other merebers of the family, of 
smaller si^e and less value, inhabit 
the British seas. The Burbot {Lota 
vulgaris), which is found in a few 
English rivers, is the only Euro- 
pean fresh-water species. In the 
temperate and colder parts of the 
southern hemisphere, there are also 
various representatives of the family. 
In Rupert’s Land a very nutritious 
bread is made of the eggs of a 
Burbot mixed with a little wheatcn 
flour. 
Family V.— MACROURIDS. 
This family is composed of a single genus of fishes, 
Macrourus of Bloch, or Lepidoleprus of Risso, and 
belongs, like the Gadoids, to the Thoracic sub-order 
of Anacanths. By many the genus is annexed to the 
Gadoids, instead of being made the type of a separate 
family, to which distinction, however, its peculiar 
dermal skeleton seems to give it a strong claim. Species 
exist in the Greenland and Norwegian seas, in the 
Mediterranean, and on the coasts of Australia, but 
none have been detected in the British Channel, per- 
haps from their being inhabitants of deep water beyond 
the action of trawl nets. They seldom exceed a foot 
in length. They have the turbinals or nostril-bones 
largely developed, so as to form, by the apposition of 
their vertical plates, a mesial crest on the snout, 
which is flanked on each side by a wing-like lateral 
process. These bones, in conjunction with the broad 
reverted pre-orbitar plates, support an acute snout. 
The body is highest and fullest in the pectoral region, 
and is compressed posteriorly, tapering gradually into 
the thin acute pointed tail, at whose tip the broad 
anal and long second dorsal unite, without any separate 
caudal being interposed. Teeth villiform ; mouth 
inferior, behind the projecting snout, with a barbel 
on the chin. The premaxillaries border the anterior 
half of the mouth, and are protractile directly down- 
wards, their long pedicels moving in the vault of the 
turbinals. The scales are armed on their discs with 
acute spines, and the head is encased in bones with 
scaly and muciferous surfaces. The Branchiostegals 
are six. 
Family VI.— PLETIRONECTIDS. (Flat-Fishes.) 
Plate 6, figs. 31, 32, 33. 
This family is distinguished among vertebrals by a 
want of symmetry — the two sides being not only dis- 
similar in colour, but having the lateral fins differently 
developed, and the bones of the base of the skull and 
face so twisted that the two eyes are placed one over 
the other on the coloured side of the fish. On this 
account Prince Charles Bonaparte named the family 
Heterosomata (diverse sides), and it had previously 
been denominated Pleuronectidce, or “ Swimmers on 
the side.” In these fishes the body is very greatly 
compressed, so that both the ventral and dorsal edges 
are acute, and the sides are circumscribed in the forms 
of round, oval, ovate, or elliptical discs, the paler side 
being beneath in the usual position of the fish when 
swimming, and simulating the bell}'. The dorsal fin 
edges the whole back, and in some genera runs for- 
ward over the forehead to the nostrils, the anal fringing 
the ventral edge in the same manner. Sometimes 
these two fins unite at the point of the tail ; in other 
species they fall short of the end of the back-bone, and 
a good-sized caudal is interposed. Branchiostegals, 
six. No air-bladder. There is no want of symmetry 
in the spinal column posterior to the scapulo -coracoid 
arch ; the interneural and interhiemal spines are in 
pairs, each pair supporting one dermo-neural, or dermo- 
hffimal spine. 
The genera are Platessa (Plaice, Fluke, Flounder); Ilippo- 
(jlossus (Holibut): Psetta (Turbot, Brill); Zmgopterus (Top- 
knot); Solea (Sole); Monocliir; Achirvs; Playusia; Paralicihys 
(Girard); PlaliclUhys (Girard); Pleuronichthys (Girard); Paru- 
phrys (Girard) ; and Psettichthys (Girard). 
The Flounder family, or Pleuronectids, are of much 
importance in the fish-diet of England, Fiance, and 
Germany, as they keep longer after death than other 
fish, and can therefore be safely ti'ansported to a 
greater distance inland. In certain districts of Eng- 
