24 Transactions. — Zoology. 



According to Collett, the body in the Northern forms is also 

 marked with 4-6 brownish black longitudinal bands. I am 

 disposed to think he must refer to the elevated longitudinal 

 ridges present in most of the accurately described specimens. 

 There was no special development of pigment on them in either 

 of my examples, but they would assume the appearance of dark 

 bands in a dried specimen. 



As in the Moeraki specimen, the raised tubercles with which 

 the body is beset are composed of thick fibrous tissue. This 

 was made very obvious when the skin was allowed to dry ; in- 

 stead of standing out even more prominently than in life, as they 

 would have done if made of bone, they almost disappeared, and 

 are barely visible in a thoroughly dried piece of skin. 



(d.) Characters of the crest. — The precise characters of the crest, 

 nuchal fin, or first dorsal fin of Regalecus, seem always to have 

 been doubtful. In my former paper (7) I gave a resume of all 

 previous descriptions which had come under my notice, as well 

 as outline sketches of the more important published figures, of 

 which it will be seen no two are alike. Liitken gives a figure of 

 a specimen found at the Faroe Islands (5, p. 20), in which the 

 crest is shown to consist of two distinct nuchal fins, the anterior 

 rather less, the posterior a little more than thrice the height of 

 the head, and the rays of both terminating in simple points. 

 Collett (1, PI. II.) figures the crests of two specimens, one 

 from Nordfjord, the other from Stavanger ; in both, the rays are 

 broken off short, and the membrane between them is lost. 

 These are the only additional figures I have met with since the 

 publication of my former paper. In the present specimen, as 

 already stated, the crest was nearly perfect, the only broken 

 rays being the seventh and ninth. The membrane of the 

 fin was very little damaged, and by floating the whole crest 

 out in a dish of water, its characters could be perfectly well ascer- 

 tained. 



I find that in all essential respects the crest of the Otago 

 Harbour specimen (fig. 1) agrees with that of Cuvicr's figure of 

 E. gladius* in the illustrated edition of the " Kegne Animal." 

 It is distinctly divisible into two portions or " nuchal fins," an 

 anterior consisting of five, and a posterior of nine rays ; so that 

 the total number of rays in the crest is fourteen. In my former 

 paper I gave the number conjecturally as fifteen, stating that 

 what I took to be the last six rays were broken ; judging from 

 the present specimen, it must have been the last five rays of the 

 crest and the first of the second dorsal which were damaged. 

 Cuvier's figure shows live rays in the anterior, seven in the 

 posterior division. 



* lieprcnluced in 7, plate xxiv. 



