Date: Sunday f 20, 2012
Bib Sea Fish
The Bib is known along the whole of the coasts of the United Kingdom, but is scarcely common in the north of Scot- land and Ireland. On the other hand, it is found in the south and west of the last named country and England through the year, and at times, especially in the autumn and winter, it is even abundant.
Its chief resort is in rocky places, where it finds its congenial food in the multitude of crustaceous animals and small fishes which frequent such neighbourhoods, but sometimes they pass into gullies and recesses where the bottom is irregular or formed into pits. In general the food is sought for at an higher elevation than is usual with the Cod and Had- dock, and consequently what is found in the stomach is of a different kind.
The spawn is shed towards the end of winter, and perhaps generally later than in several others of this family of fishes. Considerable numbers are sometimes caught with a line, but although good as food, they do not stand on equality with the Cod or Whiting, and they are supposed to suffer decomposition more speedily than these fishes. When drawn up with a line it is common to find the transparent covering of the eye inflated into a bladder, and even the dorsal fins are often distended in the same manner.
It appears to be caused from the terror of the fish, by the agony of which the air of the swimming bladder is driven into these membranous parts, and it is this circum- stance, which in a less degree may be observed in other fishes, that appears to have given occasion to some of the names by which the Bib has been designated.
In shape this fish is the deepest of the British species of its family in proportion to its length, which does not often exceed a foot, although it sometimes exceeds this measure by a few inches. I have known it to weigh four pounds. The head and body are compressed, snout short and blunt, gape moderate, under jaw slightly the shortest, teeth in both, and in the palate, barb at the lower jaw. Eye rather large, not far from the snout nostrils in a depression before them.
The outline rises at first in a rounded form from the snout to the origin of the first dorsal fin, and does not begin to descend until it has reached the second dorsal, from which it slopes gradually to the tail. The greatest depth is at the vent, which is nearer the front than a third of the whole length, and almost under the root of the pectoral fin. Scales small, and easily lost, lateral line high at first sloping down opposite the end of the pectoral fin.
The first dorsal fin rises to a point, long enough to overlap a portion of the second. Pectorals pointed, tail slightly concave, first ray of the ventrais long and slender, reaching beyond the vent. Colour of the back reddish brown or dusky yellow, sides coppery, and so also in some instances the belly, sometimes also with irregular dusky shades. Not unfrequently the sides are marked with bands of a deeper colour. A black spot at the origin of the pectoral fin. A border sometimes light coloured sometimes dark, round the extremity of the tail. 
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