Identifier: historyoffisheso04couch (find matches)
Title: A history of the fishes of the British Islands
Year: 1862 (1860s)
Authors: Couch, Jonathan, 1789-1870 Lydon, A. F
Subjects: Fishes
Publisher: London, Groombridge and Sons
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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shes, vol. i, p. 458. The earliest account we possess of the occurrence of a FlyingFish in Britain is by Pennant, who reports that in June, 1765,there was one caught in the River Towy, at a small distancebelow Carmarthen; whither it had been brought by the tidewhich flows as far as that town. He had not himself seen it,and as at the time when * Pennant wrote his British Zoology,it was not understood that there existed more than one speciesof Flying Fish, except indeed the Flying Gurnard; he thereforesaw no reason to doubt that the representation he has given,and which he must have derived from some preserved example,was a correct figure of the fish; although in fact it is a likenessof the Lesser Flying Fish, (Exoccctus volitans,) of which weentertain a doubt whether it has at any time been seen inour seas. A second example of a Flying Fish is recorded to have beenfound on the beach at Helford, near Falmouth, scarcely dead,and still fresh from the ocean; and from the dimensions of this
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GRKATEH FLYING FISH. 129 specimen given to me by its possessor, TMr. John Fox, ofPlymouth, I have no hesitation in believing it to be the GreaterFlying Fish referred to above. But if any doubt could remainit must be set at rest by the examination which I had anopportunity of making of one which had throAvn itself on thequay at Plymouth, and which came immediately into the handsof the gentleman who then possessed it. In the month ofOctober, 1849, another of these fishes was left by the tide inStonehouse Pool, in the harbour of Plymouth; and it is atthis time preserved in the museum of the Institute at thattown. The faculty of flying, or rising aloft to a considerable heightin the air, is such a remarkable character in fishes, that it hasalways excited attention in those who have observed it, andwho have considered it an amusing incident, which served tolessen the tediousness of a long voyage over an expanse of oceanthat is little diversified by other occurrences. But although toa casua

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