HALIBUT (from ME. hely, Eng. holy + ME. butte, Eng. but, Ger. Butte, Swed. butte, floun ddr; so called as eaten especially on holy days). The largest and most important of the flatfish. This species (Hippoglossus hippoglossus) is elongated and rather thick in form (see colored Plate of Foon-FfsnEs) and lies on its left side, which is white, while the right side, uniform dark brown in color, with very small smooth scales, is uppermost and bears both the large eyes. The capacious mouth is symmetrically placed, as also are the ventral fins. Specimens sometimes reach huge sizeseven or eight feet in length— and weigh 400 pounds or more; but these are be lieved always to be females, and their flesh is poor. A weight of 75 pounds or less is more usual, and such fish are in better condition. Lit tle ones are called 'chicken halibut' by the New England fishermen. The halibut abounds in all northern seas at moderate depths, extending as far south as it can find water only a few degrees above the freezing-point; hence it ranges farther in winter than in summer, infrequently to the region of New York, on the eastern, and San Franciseobn the western coast; or to the British Channel in Europe. Formerly it was extremely numerous in Massachusetts Bay and on George's Bank, but since about 1850 has become scarce south of the Banks of Newfoundland, where it haunts the skirts of the Banks, and must year by year be followed into deeper and deeper water (300 to 500 fathoms) as those in the shallower places are depleted. The halibut are voracious,
and, despite their bulk, active and fierce; their principal food is believed to be mollusks and crustaceans of various kinds, but they chase and devour all sorts of fishes, and sometimes follow the schools of Arctic eapelin close inshore, or pursue fishes at the surface, disabling them with strokes of the tail as well as seizing them in their mouths. The halibut, in its turn, is preyed upon by seals, the white whale, various large sharks, and, when young. by its own kind. The females become heavy with roe in the latter part of summer, and then seek comparatively shallow water in which to spawn.
Halibut are caught by the same methods as are cod. (For particulars see Con; Fl S I ERIES. ) Two other closely related fishes are the arrow-toothed halibut (Atherrsthes stomias) of the North Pa cific, about two feet in length and largely caught and utilized in the Aleutian Islands: and the Greenland halibut ( Reinhardtias hippoglossoides), which is yellowish brown, may reach a very large size, and inhabits the Arctic Atlantic, but not numerously.