362 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



of a sea-devil and a brotulid from even greater 

 depths, taken while the fish were alive, breathing 

 and swimming. These sea-de\als differ from the 

 shallow water anglers in being rounded rather than 

 flattened and this shows that they are not bottom 

 livers but mid-water floaters. In fact, some of 

 them, such as Diabolidium, could not very well rest 

 on anything hard without damaging some of their 

 delicate structures. Most of those we captured 

 were a hundred or two hundred fathoms at least 

 from the sea bottom. In one haul at Station Sev- 

 enty-four we took seven individuals of six species. 

 Of the seven illustrated three were alive when they 

 came to the surface, and two showed distinctly il- 

 lumination of the bulb-like tips of the tentacles. In 

 Diabolidium not only the tip of the tentacle, but 

 all the larger teeth were dimly outlined with lu- 

 minescence — apparently a mucus like that given 

 off from the numerous pores of the skin. I tried to 

 estimate roughly the relative proportions of the 

 mouth and the rest of the body and in two species 

 found it quite four-fifths of the entire animal. 



And so, had we space to go on, we might show 

 that a generous majority of the deep sea fish are 

 little more than living eating-machines, with every 

 function subordinated to that of capture with the ap- 

 palling rows of teeth, engulfment in the cavernous 

 mouth, and finally reception and digestion in a stom- 

 ach which is beyond belief elastic and distensible. 



I shall conclude my notes on these deep sea fish 

 with the account of a discovery published ^ about a 



^C. Tate Regan, Proc. Royal Soc, London, XCVII, No. E684, 

 page 386. 



