72 Description of a new British Ray. 



ferred to any species described by other authors, I am not 

 able to specify, except that I have, with some degree of hesi- 

 tation, supposed it to be possibly the Rata Asterias of Ray, 

 Syn. Pise. p. 27. I can find nothing in Eisso's Ichthyologie 

 de Nice, 1810, or in Fleming's or Jenyns' Works on British 

 Animals, to lead me to suppose that this fish is known to ei- 

 ther of these gentlemen. 



The specimen described, which was of the ordinary size, 

 measured 3 feet 8 inches in length, of which the tail was 19 

 inches ; the breadth 2 feet 4 J inches. The snout projected 

 f inch, prominent and elevated ; the mouth 3 J inches wide, 

 6 inches from the snout. Under jaw peaked in the middle, 

 the teeth slender, sharp, in rows not very closely placed. — 

 The body passes off circularly from the snout, the greatest 

 breadth opposite the centre of the disk, and of a rounded form. 

 From the snout the ridge is elevated to the eyes, a distance 

 of 5j inches ; eyes 2 inches asunder ; temporal orifices large. 

 Body thickest posteriorly; the tail stout at its origin, rounded 

 above, tapering ; a groove along the body and tail ; two fins 

 on the latter, close together. A few spines near the end of 

 the snout, a semicircle of them behind each eye ; four short 

 parallel rows on the centre of the back, and a middle one con- 

 tinued along the groove to the tail ; which is covered with 

 stout hooks, scarcely in regular order. The remainder of the 

 body smooth. Colour above, a uniform dusky brown, white 

 below. On the back, a variable number of ocellated spots, 

 the size of the section of a large pea, the centre pale yellow, 

 the margin a deeper impression, of the colour of the skin. I 

 have counted from eight to sixteen of these spots in different 

 specimens, and believe they have no determinate number ; 

 but they are always placed, on each side, with corresponding 

 regularity. 



Besides this description and figure, which I hope will en- 

 able those who visit our fishing vessels to ascertain this spe- 

 cies, I will further observe, as marks of distinction from the 

 other British species of this genus, that in addition to the form 

 of the teeth, which are crooked and slender, resembling a bird's 

 claw in miniature, but which still are less long, slender, sharp 

 or crooked than in young specimens of the R. Oxyrhynchus, 

 it may be distingaished by a great tendency to circularity in 

 the disk, formed chiefly by a rounding off of the pectoral fins, 

 by a flatness of the anterior portion, by the uniformity of its 

 colour, the regularity of the spots, and the comparatively 

 short and tapering tail. 



It is properly the sandy ray of fishermen, that name being 

 applied to the R. maculata, or homlyn, only by carelessly 



