The Spotted Eagle Ray. 303 



one. Bleeker (1852) says that "the genital appendages are short, conical, 

 and non-valvate." Unfortunately neither author gives the size of his fish. 

 The other common Beaufort Myliobatid, Rhinoptera bonasus, likewise has 

 very short claspers. None which I have taken had such appendages as long 

 as an inch. Furthermore Mr. Coles states that all the huge males of A. 

 narinari that he has taken at Cape Lookout had claspers shorter than in rays 

 of the same relative size belonging to the genus Dasyatis. 



HABITAT. 



The spotted sting ray, Aetohatus narinari, is cosmopolitan in the tropical 

 and semitropical waters of the world. First found on the coast of Brazil 

 by Abbeville in 1614 and by Marcgrave and Piso in 1648, it has since been 

 reported from the same waters by Agassiz (1836), Miiller and Henle (1841), 

 Jordan and Evermann (1898), and lastly by Miranda Ribeiro (1907), 

 293 years after the French friar above named published his book. 



Next it is heard of in the West Indies, where it was taken in Jamaican 

 waters by Sloane (1697 and 1725) and by Browne (1756). Euphrasen's 

 specimen came from St. Bartholomew, one of the lesser Antilles, but he 

 gave as its more extended habitat the West Indies and especially those 

 east of the Caribbean Sea. Forster collected his Raja edentula in the South 

 Seas somewhere between 1772 and 1776, but his manuscript was not pub- 

 lished until 1844. Thus it came about that, from the time of Abbeville 

 in 1614 till that of Russell in 1804 (when he described his ocellated raja 

 from the Indian Ocean), a space of 190 years, it was thought that this ray 

 was peculiar to the tropical waters of the western Atlantic. 



Of later references to its occurrence in Gulf-Caribbean waters, there is 

 no dearth. Henshall (1895) found it on the west coast of Florida, and 

 Thompson (Jordan and Thompson 1905) 10 years later collected and studied 

 it at the Tortugas. While in Porto Rican waters its presence has been 

 recorded by Poey (1881), by Stahl (1883), and lastly by Evermann and 

 Marsh (1900), in their exhaustive study of the fishes of that island. Finally 

 Jordan (1887) and Jordan and Evermann (1896) indicate that it is a common 

 form throughout the West Indies. From personal observation and from 

 inquiry among reliable persons I am assured that it is common throughout 

 the Florida Keys from Tortugas to the mainland. 



Drifting north with the Gulf Stream in summer, its presence has been 

 recorded at Beaufort by Yarrow (1877), Jordan and Gilbert (1879), Jordan 

 (1887), Jordan and Evermann (1896), Smith (1907), Gudger (1910, 1912A, 

 1913), and by Coles (1910, 1913). It should be noted that Coles, fishing 

 at Cape Lookout (12 miles from Beaufort), has seen larger numbers and 

 larger specimens of this ray than any other student of the fish. He captured 

 over 50 specimens and saw great schools estimated to contain hundreds of 

 individuals. 



Specimens from the Red Sea have been described by Ruppell (1835), 

 by Muller and Henle (1841), and by Klunzinger (1871). The first reported 



