Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/204

190 by some naturalists, considered as the young. It attains the length of eighteen inches, and is rather thick in proportion. The colours are subject to some variation, but in general may be thus described. The ground-colour of the body is blue-green, darker on the upper parts, and paler on the lower; the scales, which are of large size, have orange-coloured margins, more or less wide: the head and cheeks are green with irregular lines of orange, and the thick lips are flesh-coloured. All the fins have red rays, and the intervening membranes spotted with fine greenish blue.

Such were the colours carefully noted down by Mr. Yarrell, of a fine specimen sent to him from Berwick; but one equally large from Swansea, described by Mr. Dillwyn, had a very different appearance. "The colour was red, becoming pale orange on the body; the body ornamented with bluish-green oval spots; the fins and tail green, with a few red spots; the dorsal-fin had spots along the base only." This discrepancy would depend on the greater or less width of the orange margins of the scales, in the former case the green hues, in the latter the red, predominating; while it serves to give a notion of the difficulty experienced by naturalists in determining the species of this charming Family, arising from the variableness of their colorationcolouration [sic].

The habits of the European Wrasses appear to agree with those of their congeners in sunnier seas. The vast reefs and marine shrubberies of coral, with their innumerable animalcules, are indeed wanting in our northern latitudes, but still our rocks are inhabited by multitudes of