Volume 39, Plate XXI / Ichthyology (Fish)

European File-Fish

Balistes Capriscus

Long known in the Mediterranean, the European File-Fish has wandered to our shores only once, a specimen of about nine and a half inches taken on the Sussex coast in 1837, the ordinary length being one to two feet. It is named for the rough granular projections on the first dorsal spine, and that spine and its neighbour are so contrived that the fin springs erect with force; its flesh is held in no esteem and reckoned deleterious.