HISTORY OF THE SPOTTED EAGLE RAY, AETOBATUS NARINARl, 

 TOGETHER WITH A STUDY OF ITS EXTERNAL STRUCTURES. 



By E. W. Gudger. 



This paper had its inception in the desire to record permanently certain 

 observations which I was so fortunate as to make on this ray at the Labor- 

 atory of the United States Bureau of Fisheries, at Beaufort, North Carolina, 

 in the summer of 1909; but, it was very quickly seen that the value of the 

 paper would be greatly increased if it included a review of the better-known 

 literature of the fish. Before this could be done, however, I again found 

 myself at Beaufort (1910), where I was more fortunate than ever in getting 

 specimens. Later (191 3), while working at the Marine Laboratory of the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington at Tortugas, Florida, a number of fine 

 specimens were obtained from Key West, making possible a comparison 

 of Florida and North Carolina forms. Meanwhile the study of the literature 

 proved of very great interest, and finally it was determined to make the 

 paper include a review of all previous work on this ray. To this end neither 

 time nor effort has been spared and it is believed that the paper justifies 

 its title, since in it every scientific article has been reviewed and every figure 

 of the ray reproduced (with three exceptions noted later), which so far as 

 I know have ever been published. 



In such a work, done under many difficulties and at great distances 

 from libraries, I am under many obligations to many people, and it is a 

 pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to those who have made this paper 

 possible. To Dr. Theodore N. Gill and Dr. Barton W. Evermann I am 

 indebted for much invaluable advice and suggestions. To the United States 

 Bureau of Fisheries I wish to express my thanks for the fact that the 

 facilities of its laboratory at Beaufort, North Carolina, and of its library 

 at Washington have been freely put at my disposal. My hearty thanks 

 are due Dr. A. G. Mayer, who not only afforded me every facility of his 

 laboratory at Tortugas and Key West, but whose interest led him per- 

 sonally to procure for me three of my four Florida specimens. 



THE SPOTTED EAGLE RAY, AETOBATUS NARINARL 



Among the selachians, or fishes with exposed strap-shaped gill-slits, the 

 order Batoidei, skates and rays, is easily the most interesting because of 

 the very extraordinary and unusual forms assumed by these flat-bodied, 

 disk-shaped animals. All the families of North American rays are repre- 

 sented along the shores of eastern North Carolina, but of them the eagle 



^43 



