Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/110

82 wonder if we occasionally find the synonymes misapplied, the references to ancient authors misplaced, and certain species sometimes rediscovered, that have a better title to a designation than others which for a time have been permitted to bear it. Another fertile source of error arises from the fact, common indeed to species of other families in Nature, that several fishes bear different names in different places; and, still worse, in some instances the same name is applied by the same people to separate species, not from supposing them the same, but from some characters which they possess in common, of which this name is descriptive, though in other respects the species widely differ. Many curious instances might be given in illustration of these remarks, but scarcely any one has led to a greater extent of confusion than the species I am about to describe, which appears to have been known to some ancient naturalists, but which hitherto does not seem to have fallen into the hands of any recent enquirer.

The specimen here figured was taken November 8th, 1842, with a baited hook, at a place termed the Edges, a margin of rocky ground running parallel with the land at the distance of three miles south of Polperro. The weight was six pounds; the body in figure and thickness not unlike that of the common sea-bream (Pagellus centrodontus), but rather deeper and more stout. The head thick, the muzzle remarkably so, and rounded, the line of the front sloping suddenly from the forehead to the mouth; the eyes of moderate size, elevated, and near the front, iris yellow: nostrils in a slight depression, the superior large and patulous: jaws equal, in a line with the front, the lower one with a well-marked chin: the teeth in front rather stout, somewhat separate, those of the upper and lower jaws interlocking. The scales large, and conspicuous on the posterior plate of the gill-covers; the middle plate has none, and there are but few vestiges on the anterior plate. The head being short, the back rises high above it. The lateral line very dark, less curved than in the more common sparoid fishes, and scarcely continued full to the tail; the body terminating in a defined form at the caudal fin, with an incision opposite the direction of the lateral line, it is also somewhat contracted at the vent. Colour of the front and summit of the head a brownish red; of the back and fins much like that of the braize or becker (Pagrus vulgaris), such as would be formed by a mixture of lake and vermilion: fins the same, except the anal, which is a pale yellow: sides a pale red, belly whitish. As the colours faded, at the angles where the scales meet there was a yellow margin.