"The markets are generally supplied by the trawl. The principal English trawling-ground lies from Dover to Devonshire. They may be taken by spillers, but are not commonly captured with hooks; it is suggested that one reason may be that spillers are mostly used by day, whereas the sole is a night feeder. They are sometimes angled for with the hook, baited with crabs, worms, or mollusks; the most favorable time for fishing is at night, after a blow, when the water is thick, while a land breeze answers better than a sea breeze."
Several smaller species of sole are found in Europe. In Japan Zebrias zebra, black-banded, and Usinosita japonica, known as Usinóshita, or cow's tongue, are common. Farther south are numerous species of Synaptura and other genera peculiar to the Indian and Australian regions.
The Tongue-fishes: Cynoglossinæ.—The tongue-fishes are soles having the eyes on the left side not separated by a bony ridge, the two being very small and apparently in the same socket. The body is lanceolate, covered usually with rough scales, and as often with two or three lateral lines as with one. The species are mostly Asiatic. Cynoglossus robustus and other species are found in Japan, and in India are many others belonging to Cynoglossus and related genera. The larger species are valued as food. The single European species Symphurus nigrescens, common in the Mediterranean, is too small to have any value. Symphurus plagiusa, the tongue-fish of our coast, is common on our sandy shores from Cape Hatteras southward. Symphurus plagusia, scarcely different, replaces it in the West Indies. Symphurus atricandus is found in San Diego Bay, and numerous other species of no economic importance find their place farther south.
Fig. 442.—Symphurus plagiusa (L.). Beaufort, N. C.
CHAPTER XXVIII
SUBORDER JUGULARES
The Jugular-fishes.—In all the families of spiny-rayed fishes, as ranged in order in the present work, from the Berycidæ to the Soleidæ, the ventrals are thoracic in position, the pelvis, if present, being joined to the shoulder-girdle behind the symphysis of the clavicles so that the ventral fin falls below or behind the pectoral fin. To this arrangement the families of Bembradidæ and Pinguipedidæ offer perhaps the only exceptions.
In all the families which precede the Berycidæ in the linear series adopted in this work, the ventral fins when present are abdominal, the pelvis lying behind the clavicles and free from them as in the sharks, the reptiles, and all higher vertebrates.
In all the families remaining for discussion, the ventrals are brought still farther forward to a point distinctly before the pectorals. This position is called jugular (Lat. jugulum, throat).