The flesh of most fishes is white, flaky, readily digestible, and with an agreeable flavor. Some, as the salmon, are charged with oil, which aids to give an orange hue known as salmon color. Others have colorless oil which may be of various consistencies. Some have dark-red flesh, which usually contains a heavy oil which becomes acrid when stale. Some fishes, as the sharks, have tough, coarse flesh. Some have flesh which is watery and coarse. Some are watery and tasteless, some dry and tasteless. Some, otherwise excellent, have the muscular area, which constitutes the chief edible part of the fish, filled with small bones. =Relative Rank of Food-fishes.=--The writer has tested most of the noted food-fishes of the Northern Hemisphere. When properly cooked (for he is no judge of raw fish) he would place first in the ranks as a food-fish the eulachon, or candle-fish (_Thaleichthys pacificus_). [Illustration: FIG. 194.--Eulachon, or Ulchen. _Thaleichthys pretiosus_ Girard. Columbia River. Family _Argentinidæ_.] This little smelt, about a foot long, ascends the Columbia River, Frazer River, and streams of southern Alaska in the spring in great numbers for the purpose of spawning. Its flesh is white, very delicate, charged with a white and very agreeable oil, readily digested, and with a sort of fragrance peculiar to the species. [Illustration: FIG. 195.--Ayu, or Japanese Samlet, _Plecoglossus altivelis_ Schlegel. Tanagawa, Tokyo, Japan.] Next to this he is inclined to place the ayu (_Plecoglossus altivelis_), a sort of dwarf salmon which runs in similar fashion in the rivers of Japan and Formosa. The ayu is about as large as the eulachon and has similar flesh, but with little oil and no fragrance. [Illustration: FIG. 196.--Whitefish, _Coregonus clupeiformis_ Mitchill. Ecorse, Mich.] Very near the first among sea-fishes must come the pampano (_Trachinotus carolinus_) of the Gulf of Mexico, with firm, white, finely flavored flesh. The red surmullet of Europe (_Mullus barbatus_) has been long famed for its delicate flesh, and may perhaps be placed next. Two related species in Polynesia, the munu and the kumu (_Pseudupeneus bifasciatus_ and _Pseudupeneus porphyreus_), are scarcely inferior to it. [Illustration: FIG. 197.--Golden Surmullet, _Mullus auratus_ Jordan & Gilbert. Woods Hole, Mass.] [Illustration: FIG. 198.--Spanish Mackerel, _Scomberomorus maculatus_ Mitchill. Family _Scombridæ_. Key West.]