AMERICAN FISHES. 
young Smooth Flounder may be taken in summer on the beaches. The 
largest females observed weighed twenty-three ounces, the weight of the 
spawn being seven ounces. Too little attention has hitherto been paid to 
this fish, but it seems more than probable that in the future it will greatly 
increase in favor. 
The Greenland Turbot, Platysomatichthys hippoglossoides , though never 
occurring in our inshore waters, is found on the off-shore banks, as far 
south as George’s Bank, and a certain quantity of them is usually brought 
to New York in winter. It is emphatically an arctic species, being' 
abundant on the coast of Greenland, often found at Flolsteinborg and 
beyond, and along this entire coast very eagerly sought by the natives.. 
The Eskimo name is “ Kalleraglik,” and the fish is also known as “Little 
Halibut.” In Gunther’s work on “ The Fishes of the British Museum,”’ 
he has confused this species with the true Halibut, making it appear that 
only the former is to be found on the coast of North America. In North¬ 
ern Greenland the Turbot is found only at very great depths, and is fished 
for, in water of three hundred and fifty to three hundred and eighty fath¬ 
oms, through holes in the ice, over certain banks in Omenak Fiord and 
at the mouth of the Jacob’s-Haven ice-fiord which is also packed with 
great ice-floes. It is said to be found only in the ice-fiords and between, 
the great ice-fields, and there only in the coldest months of the year. 
In South Greenland they are taken on the oceanic banks at a depth of 
sixty to one hundred and eighty fathoms, though there considered to be 
not so abundant as in North Greenland. In Fortune Bay, Newfoundland,, 
according to Captains G. Johnson and A. Leighton, of Gloucester, they 
are very abundant in sixty to three hundred fathoms, and are caught chiefly 
in winter. They are also obtained by the Gloucester halibut fleet on the 
outer edge of the oceanic banks, in two hundred and fifty to three hundred 
fathoms of water. 
Their habits are not at all well understood, but it would appear from the 
statement of several experienced fisherman, whom I have questioned, that 
they occur on the very edge of the continental slope in deeper water than 
the true Halibut, in fact in places where the slope is so nearly perpendi¬ 
cular that the Halibut can hardly hold their places on the bottom. This 
species is more symmetrical than any other of the family on our coast, and 
moreover, is colored upon both sides of the body—a fact which indicates 
that its movements are more like those of the ordinary symmetrical fishes 
and that it can rest with the body in a vertical attitude. 
