IS a species of the Ray, which was long disregarded in this country as a coarse, bad-tasted food, but which now appears upon our best tables. It is still, however, disregarded in Scotland and the north of England, where its flesh is principally used as a bait for other fish. On some parts of the continent, where these fish are caught in great abundance, they are dried for sale. The best season for Skate is the spring of the year. The body is broad and flat, of a brown colour on the back, and white on the lower side: the head is not distinct from the body, so that this fish and all belonging to this genus are apparently acephalous, or without a head. The peculiar form of this fish is owing to the large size of the pectoral fins, which extend from the head to the base of the tail, and are very wide in the middle, and so, combined with the sharpness of the snout, give the fish the shape known as rhomboidal. Dr. Monro has remarked, that in the gills of a large Skate there are upwards of one hundred and forty-four thousand subdivisions, or folds; and that the whole extent of this membrane, whose surface is nearly equal to that of the whole human body, may be seen by a microscope to be covered with a network of vessels, that are not only extremely minute, but exquisitely beautiful. The tail of the Skate is long, and generally prickly. The mouth is, as it were, paved with teeth, which are flat, and nearly square in shape. In the full-grown male the centre teeth are pointed, at least in some species. The eggs deposited by the female Skate are very similar to those laid by the shark, being in the shape of a square bag, with two horns at each end as here represented. [Illustration] In this horny case the embryo is contained, and grows till it has acquired strength enough to burst through its prison. The colour of the bag is maroon, and the substance like thin brown parchment or leather. The female begins to drop these singly in the month of May, and continues to do so for several months, to the number of two or three hundred. In some parts of Cumberland they are called, by the common people, Skatebarrows, on account of their resemblance to the barrows which are carried by two men, and used for the conveyance of goods, &c. The Skate sometimes attains a very large size. Willoughby speaks of one so huge that it would have served one hundred and twenty men for dinner. Some naturalists are of opinion that these fishes are the largest inhabitants of the deep, and that only the smallest of them come near the surface of the water, the biggest remaining flat at the bottom of the sea, where an unfathomable deep secures them against the wiles of man. Nine species of the Skate or Ray are found on the British coasts. [Illustration: THE THORNBACK, (_Raia clavata_,)]