American food and game fishes - a popular account of all the species found in America, north of the equator, with keys for ready identification, life histories and methods of capture (1902) (14782679455)

Lady-fish, Bone-fish, Banana-fish Albula vulpes
Identifier: americanfoodgam00jord (find matches)
Title: American food and game fishes : a popular account of all the species found in America, north of the equator, with keys for ready identification, life histories and methods of capture
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Jordan, David Starr, 1851-1931 Evermann, Barton Warren, 1853-1932
Subjects: Fishes
Publisher: New York : Doubleday, Page & Co.
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto



Text Appearing Before Image:
subequal; caudal lobes long and slender.Colour, bluish above; the sides silvery; white beneath. 87 THE LADY-FISHES Family X. Albnlidcs Body rather long, not much compressed, covered with rathersmall, brilliantly silvery scales; head naked; snout conic, subquad-rangular, shaped like that of a pig and overlapping the small, in-ferior, horizontal mouth; maxillary rather strong, short, with adistinct supplemental bone; premaxillaries short, not protractile;jaws, vomer, and palatines with bands of villiform teeth; broadpatches of coarse, blunt teeth on the tongue; eye large, median inhead, a bony ridge above it, and almost covered with an an-nular adipose eyelid; preopercle with a broad, flat, membranaceousedge; pseudobranchiae present; gill-membranes entirely separateand free from the isthmus; a fold of skin across gill-membranesanteriorly; no gular plate; lateral line present; belly flattish; cov-ered with ordinary scales; caudal widely forked. This family contains but a single species.
Text Appearing After Image:
Lady-fish ; Bone-fish ; Banana-fish Albjila vulpes (Linnaeus) This beautiful and active fish is almost universally distributedon sandy coasts in all tropical seas. It ranges northward as faras San Diego and Long Island, and is generally abundant. It isa fish of very attractive appearance, usually litttle valued as food,though in some places, as at Key West, it is held in highesteem. As a game-fish it is highly appreciated by those famil-iar with it. It resembles, in this respect, the ten-pounder. 88 Lady Fish ; Bone Fish; Banana Fish The young of this species pass through a metamorphosis,analogous to that seen in the conger eels, the ten-pounder,and the awa. They for a time are elongate, band-shaped, withvery small head and loose transparent tissues. From this condi-tion they become gradually shorter and more compact, shrinkingfrom 3 or 3J inches to 2 inches in length. In the Gulf of Cali-fornia where this species abounds, these band-shaped young areoften thrown by the waves on the be