Black-mouthed Alfonsin or Rough-fish or Rosy Soldierfish Vintage 1990 Fish Print C.E. Norton & M. Young

A colour print, rescued from a disbound book of Fish prints from 1990, with unrelated text on the reverse. Original printing date 1843, see text below.

Suitable for framing, size is approx 8.5" x 5" or 21cm x 12.5cm printed edge to edge.

This is a vintage print not a modern copy and can show signs of age or previous use commensurate with the age of the print. Please view any scans as they form part of the description.

All pictures will be sent bagged and in a board backed envelope for protection in transit.

While every care is taken to ensure my scans or photos accurately represent the item offered for sale, due to differences in monitors and internet pages my pictures may not be an exact match in brightness or contrast to the actual item.

Text taken from the opposite page. Please note this cannot be supplied with the print due to being on the reverse side of the previous print. Any spelling errors are due to the OCR program used.

Rosy Soldierfish
BLACK-MOUTHED ALFONSIN, or Rough-fish, Trachichthys pretiosus (now Rosy Soldierfish, Hoplostethus mediterraneus). Hand coloured lithograph by C. E. Norton and M. Young, pl. 9 from Richard Thomas Lowe's A History of the Fishes of Madeira, 1843-60.

This fish occurs in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean and is recorded from waters as far north as Ireland. An average sized example measures about eight inches in length but the species grows considerably larger in waters off West Africa. Its belly has a serrated edge and its fins are spiny, but its rosy coloration redeems its rather ugly appearance.
The Reverend Richard Thomas Lowe was the English chaplain at the island of Madeira for many years but he seems to have spent more time studying aspects of its natural history than caring for the spiritual welfare of its expatriate population. Besides his pioneering work on fishes he wrote extensively on the shells and flora of Madeira and its satellite islands. In 1874, when returning to the island after a sojourn in England, the ship in which he was travelling, the Liberia, was wrecked in a storm and he was drowned.