SILVERY HAIRTAIL. 207 



Cuvicr and M. Valenciennes, in their description of T. 

 lep turns, state the situation of its lateral line to be but one- 

 third of the space above the line of the edge of the abdomen : 

 Mr. Hoy states that the side line went straight along the 

 middle : in other respects, Mr. Hoy's second fish agrees 

 nearly with T. lepturus, as described in the Histoire Natu- 

 relle des Poissons, already referred to. It would seem how- 

 ever, that it must have been comparatively a deeper fish : the 

 barring of the sides does not occur in T. Lepturus ; and the 

 latter has never yet been recorded as arriving at the gigantic 

 size of Mr. Hoy's specimen, which could not have been less 

 than fourteen feet and a half in length ; the largest in the 

 Paris Museum is stated to measure only three feet. It is 

 evident that more information on the subject is required : the 

 result of it may be the establishment of Mr. Hoy's second 

 fish as "a new species of Trichiurus, and of his first fish, 

 which is evidently distinct from the second, as the type of a 

 new genus, if, as Dr. Fleming has suggested,* it was not a 

 mutilated example of the Deal fish of the Orcadians, Gymne- 

 trus arcticus, the fish next described in this work. 



Specimens of Trichiurus have been taken at New York, 

 Cuba, Jamaica, Porto Rico, St. Bartholomew's, Cayenne, 

 Rio Janeiro, and Monte Video. Cuvicr thinks it may cross 

 the Atlantic ; and adds, that specimens received from Senegal 

 in no way differed from those received from America. 



Two species at least, if not more, inhabit the Indian Sea ; 

 and all the species are truly marine. The differences, how- 

 ever, which characterise the various species, are as yet not 

 sufficiently known. The work of Cuvier and M. Valen- 

 ciennes contains the characters of three species, lepturus, 

 haumela, and savala. Mr. J. E. Gray has published the 

 characters of three species in the collection at the British 

 Museum, under the names of armatus, intermedius, and 



* Loudon's Magazine of Natural Histoiy, vol iv. p. 219. 



