The Spotted Eagle Ray. 247 



width 7, and it is ij^ feet thick. The tail is 4 feet 3 inches long and its thickness at the 

 beginning is 5 inches, but it gradually becomes thinner. A little behind the beginning of 

 the tail, there is a small, short fin, a little more than an inch long; and just behind this, 

 standing erect, are two little hooks, curved like fish-hooks and 3 inches long. Its flesh has 

 a good flavor and is sufficient to feed 40 men. 



This description needs little or no comment here. It is excellent and 

 would enable one to identify the fish to-day. The statement that the head 

 of the ray is i3/^ feet thick, is, inasmuch as the length of the animal is only 

 18 inches, evidently an error (either editorial or typographical, since the 

 work was published four years after Marcgrave's death). So, likewise, is 

 the statement that the tail is 5 inches thick at the root. 



Text-figure i is Marcgrave's wood-cut made from the oil painting in the 

 collection referred to. The figure in Marcgrave's text has been colored by 

 hand in one copy of the work found in the Library of Congress, but in the 

 other copy, as in that owned by the Bureau of Fisheries and in the copy 

 belonging to the present writer, the figures are uncolored. The upper 

 surface in the colored figure is a dark steel-blue (ferreus Marcgrave calls it) 

 dotted with white or bluish-white spots. Attention should here be called 

 to the discrepancy between the description and the figure in the matter 

 of spines. The former has them curved like fish-hooks, but the figure has 

 them straight, with one large barb on each. As a matter of fact, they are 

 of the ordinary ray type, straight, flat, and multibarbed on the edges. 



Figure 3, plate 11, is a photograph of the water-color painting to which 

 reference has been made. When it is recalled that this painting was made 

 some 275 years ago, on the wild and inhospitable coast of Brazil, one hardly 

 knows whether to marvel most at the accuracy of the work or the excellency 

 of its preservation. If this figure be compared with text-figure i, it will 

 be seen how poorly the wood engraver has copied the original painting. 

 Concerning these figures, see Gudger (1912, pages 265-272).^ The marginal 

 notes on the original painting are presumably those of Count Johann Moritz. 

 Figure 4, plate 11, is a photograph of the oil painting in the larger collection 

 described above. The deficiencies of this latter figure, when compared 

 with the former or with my photograph (fig. i, plate i), are so marked as to 

 call for no comment here. 



The older writers seem to have contented themselves with merely quoting 

 Marcgrave and copying his figures. So did Piso himself, in his folio volume 

 entitled "De Indise Utriusque re Naturali et Medica," etc., Amsterdam, 

 1658, though he abridged Marcgrave's original description somewhat. 

 However, he does one good deed in giving us a clue to the meaning of the 

 Brazilian word Narinari. He tells us that the tail is armed with two stings, 

 "approaching in form the figure of an arrowhead, and therefore these fishes 

 are properly called by us Pylstaert, and by the Brazilians Narinari.'" Now 

 since the Dutch word Pylstaert means both a water bird and a sting ray, 

 we might think that the allusion was either to the wing-like pectorals or to 



1 For these photographs and for much information about these drawings, I am indebted to the courtesy 

 of Dr. Perlbach, of the Royal Library of Berlin. 



