352 A DESCRIPTION OK 
flesh of the Dog-fish is hard and disagreeable ; their skin, 
when dried, is made into the well-known shagreen, and 
from the liver a considerable quantity of oil may be ex- 
tracted. Shagreen is also made from the skin of the 
other cartilaginous fishes. 
THE SKATE, OR MAID (Raia batis,) 
Is a species of the Ray. This fish was long disregarded in 
this country as a coarse, bad-tasted food, but it appears 
now upon our best tables. It is still, however, disregarded 
in Scotland and the north of England, where the flesh of 
Skates is used principally as a bait for other fish. On 
some parts of the continent, where these fish are caught in 
great abundance, they are dried for sale. The best season 
for Skate is the spring of the year. The body is broad and 
flat, of a brown colour on the back, and white on the 
lower side, the head is not distinct from the body, so that 
this fish and all belonging to this genus are apparently 
acephalous, or without a head. Dr. Monro has remarked, 
that in the gills of a large Skate there are upwards of one 
hundred and forty-four thousand sub-divisions, or folds; 
and that the whole extent of this membrane, whose sur- 
face is nearly equal to that of the whole human body, may 
be seen by a microscope to be covered with a network ot' 
vessels, that are not only extremely minute, but exqui- 
sitely beautiful. The tail of the Skate is long, and gene- 
