Stargazer, a'spiny-rayed percoid fish of the family trachinidce or weevers, and genus uranoscopus (Linn.), so called from the position of the eyes, which look directly upward. The body is elongated, covered with smooth cycloid scales; head depressed, large and wide, bony and rough, with the gape ascending or vertically cleft, the upper jaw the shorter, and the teeth small and crowded on the jaws, palate, and vomer; branchiostegal rays six; dorsals two, of which the first is small and spinous, the second and the anal long; ventrals in front of the large pectorals and on the throat; anus very far forward; air bladder absent. In some of the family the dorsal and opercular spines are capable of inflicting painful wounds; they have the power of raising the eyeballs from and retracting them within their sockets. There are more than a dozen species of the genus, mostly East Indian, of which the best known is the JJ. vulgaris of the Mediterranean, about a foot long, grayish brown above, with irregular series of whitish spots and grayish white below; ugly as it is, some people eat it.

This was well known to the. ancients, and Aristotle correctly describes the gall bladder as larger than in most other fishes; it is also called callionymu8 by the old authors, and is proverbially referred to by dramatic writers as the emblem of an angry man. On the coast of South Carolina has been found the U. ano-plos (Cuv.), about 2 in. long, greenish above with minute black dots, and silvery below; the cheeks are unarmed. These fishes live on the bottom in deep water, burying all but the head in the sand or mud, and there lying in wait for prey; they are voracious, and like other ground fish some have sensitive barbels about the mouth; though the gills are widely open, they live a long time out of water; some have a slender fleshy filament in front of the tongue, which can be protruded.

Mediterranean Stargazer (Uranoscopus vulgaris).