172 



Stomach siphonal ; a row of fourteen very large and long pyloric cseca em- 

 braces its pyloric moiety ; the intestine, which when unravelled is about twice 

 the entire length of the fish, is arranged as in Alepocephalus bicolor, but the wall 

 of the coiled up small intestine is much thicker, and the straight hinder gut is 

 held by a stout mesentery. 



Colour : head and fins black ; body lavender-grey. 



Length 14" inches. 



Arabian Sea, off Cape Comorin, 902 fathoms. 



Regd. No. 13191. 



The microscopic structure of the hind-gut, etc., of Alepocephalus Blanfordi. 



The straight large gut in this species, as in Alepocephalus bicolor, is remark- 

 able for the great thickness of its wall and for its contracted lumen ; only in the 

 present case, although the circular muscular coat is conspicuously thick, it is not 

 this but the highly glandular mucous coat that contributes most to the thickness 

 of the wall. The great development of the glands of the mucosa, which are 

 compact little branching follicles, is in marked contrast to A. bicolor, where the 

 mucous membrane consists of simple columnar epithelium. The loose submucous 

 coat is honeycombed with (lymphatic ?) channels and crowded with leucocytes ; 

 but the large pigmented granular corpuscles which were so numerous in 

 .1. bicolor are here few in number. 



The small intestine at its duodenal end, and the pyloric ca?ca, appear, in 

 transverse sections, to be identical in structure. In both the mucous membrane 

 is thrown into apparently permanent longitudinal folds, and contains in its depth 

 a regular series of racemose glands opening to the surface by a longish duct. 



Microscopic cylinders of glandular substance, which in stained sections has 

 exactly the appearance of mammalian pancreas, run in the mesentery, parallel 

 with the pyloric caeca and in contact with them. 



138. Alepocephalus edentulus, Alcock. 



Alepocephalus edentulus, Alcock, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., Nov. 1892, p. 358, pi. xviii. fig. 2: Illustrations of 

 THE Zoology of the Investigator, Fishes, pl. XXXII. fig. 4. 



B. 6. D. 29. A. 35. V. G. P. 9. L. lat. circa 50. L. tr. 15. 



The length of the head is a little more than one-fourth, and the height of 

 the much compressed body nearly one-fifth, of the total with the caudal included. 

 The blunt snout is barely equal in length either to the width of the interorbital 

 space or to the diameter of the eye, which is very nearly two-ninths the length 

 of the head. The mouth-cleft is almost horizontal, the jaws are even anteriorly, 

 and the maxilla reaches considerably behind the vertical through the centre of 

 the eye. Minute teeth occur in a row in the premaxillse and mandibles, and 



