134 OPAH. 



not tlien any known reference to a description of it, a desig- 

 nation was adopted which it was said by an African prince to 

 bear in his own country, where, however, it is not certain it 

 was ever seen, and thenceforward it has been called by the 

 name of Opah. 



I have received information of an example that was obtained 

 in the west of Cornwall, in the early part of the summer of 

 1835, M^hich is so far remarkable that other specimens of this 

 rare fish were taken in other places about the same date. One 

 has been obtained in Devonshire also; but the larger number 

 of British specimens have been taken in the north. One of 

 these was secured in August, 1835, in the bay of Landada, 

 near Conway; another at Queensferry in the same year; and 

 again another on the coast of Norfolk, in July, 1839. Mr. 

 Norman, in the "Zoologist," mentions an individual taken off 

 Flamborough Head in February, 1849. And we think it 

 material to the history of a fish, the habits of which are so 

 little known, to preserve those dates, as a contribution toward 

 an explanation of the causes which may entice or drive it 

 from its native depths. This species, in common with the 

 Bergylt, affords an exception to a general remark that those 

 natives of the seas are the most splendidly adorned which 

 inhabit the warmer and brighter regions of the globe, where 

 the ocean is more shallow, and themselves under the influence 

 of a tropical climate. The reverse of this obtains in the fishes 

 we have mentioned; and it is probable that even the line of 

 the fisherman has never elsewhere reached to so vast a depth 

 as when it plunges to the regions in which they dwell. It is 

 from the united evidence of Scandinavian and British observers 

 that we class the Opah as an inhabitant of the deeper waters 

 of the North Sea, from which it does not often emerge, and 

 where its range appears to be a limited one, for it has not 

 been seen off the coast of Greenland, nor anywhere eastward 

 of the North Cape. 



Individuals of this species have been found to measure in 

 length from three to five feet; and an example of the former 

 was sixteen inches in depth, with the head, from the snout 

 backward ten inches. The jaws are equal, or perhaps the 

 lower a little the longest, without teeth. Eye large. The slope 

 is continued from the beginning of the dorsal fin to the upper 



