ANGLER, Lophius piscatorius, a fish not uncommon on the British shores, and sometimes called theti.shing-frog, sometimes, from its ugliness and voracity, the sea-deril.
It usually attains the size of about 3 ft. in length, sometimes 5 ft. The head is enor mously large, depressed, and spinal's; the mouth is of similar proportions (whence the Scottish name wide gab), and furnished with many sharp curved teeth: The lower jaw is considerably longer than the upper. The body is narrow in comparison with the great breadth of the head, and tapers rapidly to the tail. The whole fish is covered with a loose skin, almost without scales. There are two dorsal fins, which are spinous, and three anterior rays, regarded as belonging to the first dorsal, are free and articulated to the head, which are with great probability supposed to serve the animal as delicate organs of touch. The nostril tube is elongated into a membraneous stalk, capable of spreading out like a cup at the upper end, and of being moved in every direction by a very numerous set of muscles, the bottom of the cup being divided into projecting leaflets, on which the olfactory nerve is finally distributed. are also numerous worm-like appendages about the mouth, and by means of these, and still more of the filaments which rise from the upper part of the head, the creature is supposed to attract small fishes, upon which it seizes. The wonderful stories told upon this point seem to
require authentication, yet they are in themselves by no means incredible, and have been current concerning this fish and its congeners since before the days of Aristotle, who mentions them, and says that this fish is called a fisher because of the means by which it procures its food. Yarrell justly remarks of the stratagem ascribed to the hvkinA, that it is not more wonderful than that of spiders, which spin and repair their webs to catch insects, upon which they subsist.—The genus lophius belongs to a family of acanthopterygious fishes called lophiada3 or lophinids, and by envier peeto•ales pedun entail, remarkable for the elongation of the carpal bones, so as to form a sort of wrist, to the extremity of which the pectoral fin is articulated; so that, by means of it, these fishes are able to leap suddenly up in the water to seize prey which they observe above them; and some of them can hop about upon sea-weeds or mud from which the water has retired. They do not suffer so quickly as most other fishes from being out of the water, their gill-opening being very small, and an A. has been often known to devour flounders or other fish which have been caught along with it. The bones are much softer than those of acanthopterygious fishes in general.