304 Papers from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Tortugas. 



capture of this fish in the Indian Ocean, and, except for Forster's practically 

 unknown collections from the South Pacific, the first from any waters other 

 than the western Atlantic, was Russell's spotted ray identical with A. 

 narinari on the Coromandei coast of India in 1803. Among the specimens 

 on which Miiller and Henle (1841) based their description was one or more 

 from Indian waters. Day (1865) first collected it on the Malabar coast, 

 and later (1878) reported it as common in all the northern waters of the 

 Indian Ocean from the Red Sea to the Straits of Malacca, but especially in 

 the estuaries of India. While Gunther (1880) found in the collections of 

 the British Museum two half-grown specimens from the Seychelles, a group 

 of islands north of Madagascar. From this data we see that it is widely 

 scattered throughout the Indian Ocean. 



Nevertheless, Annandale, the latest writer on Indian rays, in 1909 

 expressed the opinion that A. narinari is restricted to the Atlantic Ocean, 

 and that the Indian forms are to be classed as A. flagelluni and A. guttata. 

 However, in a later paper (1910), he abandons this conclusion and finds that 

 A. narinari occurs in the Indian Ocean in three color varieties. For his 

 illuminating description of these see quotation on page 271. 



Found in the Malayan waters as recorded by Cantor (1849) and by Day 

 (1878) as previously noted, Bleeker (1852) says that it is common throughout 

 the whole of the East Indian Archipelago, as his lists of fishes for a dozen 

 islands show. However, for the Australian coast but one record has been 

 found. J. Douglas-Ogilby (1886) notes its capture at Cape Hawke, New 

 South Wales. 



It is in the Pacific, as is to be expected, that we find A'ctohatiis narinari 

 most widely distributed. If it is agreed that Quoy and Gaimard's 5- 

 spined ray is a synonym of our fish, then the first capture of A. narinari is 

 reported from Guam, one of the Ladrones, in 1824. It is true, however, 

 that Schneider (Bloch and Schneider 1801) had quoted from Forster's 

 manuscript that the latter had taken and described our ray under the name 

 Raja edentula at Otaheite, one of the Paumotu group, in the years 1 772-1 774. 



More captures of this ray have been reported from the Sandwich Islands 

 than from any other group in the Pacific. In 1858, Agassiz proposed the 

 name Goniobatis meleagris for a specimen sent him from this region. The 

 name was never adopted and the specimen seems to have been lost. It is 

 presumed that this ray is to be identified as A. narinari, since no other ray 

 of the kind has ever been collected there, and Jenkins (1904) and Jordan 

 and Evermann (1905) so agree. In 1901, Steindachner identified as 

 A. narinari a spotted ray collected by Schauinsland in 1896-97 at Laysan, 

 one of the extreme northwestern islands of the group. On the taking over 

 of these islands by the United States, their aquatic resources were admirably 

 worked up by the United States Bureau of Fisheries. Fishes are reported 

 on in two papers. Jenkins (1904) lists our ray (making it a synonym for 

 Goniobatis meleagris) as common at Honolulu, being for sale in the market, 

 while Jordan and Evermann (1905) procured it at both Honolulu and Hilo. 



