THE HALIBUT. 
HALIBUT, FLAT-FISH AND FLOUNDER. 
Flat fish, with eyes distorted, square, ovoid, rhomboid, long, 
Some cased in mail, some slippery-backed, the feeble and the strong, 
Sedan’d on poles, or dragg'd on hooks, or poured from tubs like water. 
Gasp side by side, together piled, in one promiscuous slaughter. 
Badham. 
f | 1 HE Halibut is widely distributed through the North Atlantic and 
North Pacific, near the shores, in shallow water, as well as upon the 
off-shore banks and the edges of the continental slope down to a depth of 
two hundred and fifty fathoms or more. In the Western Atlantic the 
species has not been observed south of the fortieth parallel, stragglers 
having occasionally been taken off Sandy Hook, Block Island, and Mon- 
tauk Point, while it ranges north at least to Cumberland Gulf, latitude 
64°, and as far as Disko, Greenland, five or six degrees within the Arctic 
Circle. Along the entire west coast of Greenland they exist, abundant 
about Iceland and north to Spitzbergen, in latitude 8o°. No one knows 
to what extent they are distributed along the European and Asiatic shores 
of the Arctic Ocean, but they have been observed on both sides of the 
North Cape, in East and West Denmark, and from the North Cape, 
latitude 71 0 , south along the entire western line of the Scandinavian 
Peninsula, in the Skager Rack and Kattegat, but not, however in the 
Baltic. South of latitude 50° their range in the Eastern Atlantic appears 
to cease. 
On the Pacific coast the Halibut, which has been shown by Dr. Bean to 
