Note 56 — NOTES ON CERTAIN FISHES AND MARINE ANIMALS FOUND IN NORFOLK.

Various species of Dog-fish are frequent off the Norfolk coast as elsewhere. The name "Sweet William" is applied to the larger fish of this kind, especially to the Tope; this appears also to have been the case in Pennant's time, for alluding to this vernacular name he supposes it was applied in ironical allusion to the offensive smell of their flesh and skin. They are objects of great aversion among the fishermen, owing to the disturbance they create among the shoals of fish, and the damage they do to both nets and the enclosed fish. Scarcely a season passes but one or more specimens of Browne's Canis carcharias, or, as modern Ichthyologists call it, Lamna cornubica, the Porbeagle, being entangled in the drift nets and landed with the herrings. One lies on the fish-wharf at Lowestoft as I write this note on the 19th of October, 1900, measuring 7 feet 10 inches in length. Jonston's figure referred to by Browne is evidently intended for this species, but he makes a slight error in the reference to the Historia Naturalis (De Piscibus et Cetis); it occurs in book v., and the figure is fig. 6 on Tab. vi., and it is marked Canis carcharias alius (not alter).