Volume 39, Plate XIV / Ichthyology (Fish)

Unctuous Sucker, or Sea-Snail & Common Sucking-Fish

Liparis vulgaris & Echeneis remora

1. Unctuous Sucker, or Sea-Snail. Usually four to six inches long, the Unctuous Sucker has a soft body that soon dissolves after death and a loose skin invested with thick slimy matter. Found on various parts of the British coast and in countries further north, it is full of spawn in January with large mature ova, is said to be eaten in Greenland though unappealing, and is far from common in the Firth of Forth.
2. Common Sucking-Fish. No more than a rare and accidental visitor to our seas, the Common Sucking-Fish is known here from a single specimen taken at Swansea from the back of a cod in 1806. Familiar in the Mediterranean and to the ancients, it feeds on small marine animals and attaches itself to ships and large fishes by an adhesive shield of seventeen or eighteen transverse laminae, worked by oblique muscles to create a vacuum.