Fig. 472.—Cusk-eel, Rissola marginata (De Kay). Virginia.
Fig. 473.—Lycodapus dermatinus Gilbert. Lower California.
Sand-lances: Ammodytidæ.—Near the Ophidiidæ are placed the small family of sand-lances (Ammodytidæ). This family comprises small, slender, silvery fishes, of both Arctic and tropical seas, living along shore and having the habit of burying themselves in the sand under the surf in shallow water. The jaws are toothless, the body scarcely scaly and crossed by many cross-folds of skin, the many-rayed dorsal fin is without spines, and the ventral fins when present are jugular. The species of the family are very much alike. From their great abundance they have sometimes much value as food, more perhaps as bait, still more as food for salmon and other fishes, from which they escape by plunging into the sand. Sometimes a falling tide leaves a sandy beach fairly covered with living "lants" looking like a moving foam of silver. Ammodytes tobianus is the sand-lance or lant of northern Europe. Ammodytes americanus, scarcely distinguishable, replaces it in America; and Ammodytes personatus in California, Alaska, and Japan. This is a most excellent pan fish, and the Japanese, who regard little things, value it highly.
Fig. 474.—Sand-lance, Ammodytes americanus De Kay. Nantucket.
Fig. 475.—Embolichthys mitsukurii (Jordan & Evermann). Formosa.
In the genus Hyperoplus there is a large tooth on the vomer. In the tropical genera there is a much smaller number of vertebræ and the body is covered with ordinary scales instead of delicate, oblique cross-folds of skin. These tropical species must probably be detached from the Ammodytidæ to form a distinct family, Bleekeriidæ. Bleekeria kallolepis is found in India, Bleekeria gilli is from an unknown locality, and the most primitive species of sand-lance, Embolichthys mitsukurii, occurs in Formosa. In this species, alone of the sand-lances, the ventral fins are retained. These are jugular in position, as in the Zoarcidæ, and the rays are I, 3. The discovery of this species makes it necessary to separate the Ammodytidæ and Bleekeriidæ widely from the Percesoces, and especially from the extinct families of Crossognathidæ and Cobitopsidæ with which its structure in other regards has led Woodward, Boulenger, and the present writer to associate it.