22 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



specific character absent in the small forms but appearing in later juveniles and adults, and distin- 

 guishing a northern form with one filament from a southern form with two. Only the collection of 

 further specimens can decide this point. It is, in any case, doubtful whether even a grouping of 

 subspecific rank has any validity when erected on the distinction of such a single, slight and isolated 

 feature, and in the face of so many characters which conform. 

 In the synopsis below the genus is reduced to a single species 



Cer alias Kroyer, 1844 



Illicium borne on long slender pterygiophor. Adult esca with one or two filaments only. Two caruncles 



holbolli 



(a) Dorsal fin of normal structure subsp. holbolli 



(b) Dorsal fin concealed under skin subsp. xenistius 



Bertelsen's synonymy is revised and extended as follows: 



Ceratias holbolli holbolli 



Ceratias holbolli Kroyer, 1844, p. 639, and in Gaimard, 1842-56, Poissons, pi. ix, et auctorum. 



Ceratias uranoscopus Murray in Thomson, 1877, p. 70, fig. 20; Giinther, 1887, p. 54, pi. xi, fig. c. 



Ceratias shufeldti Giinther, 1887, p. 54. 



Mancalias uranoscopus Gill, 1878, p. 227; Goode, 1880, p. 469; Jordan & Gilbert, 1882, p. 848; Goode & Bean, 1895, 



p. 490; Regan, 1926, p. 37; Regan & Trewavas, 1932, p. 99; Parr, 1932, p. 13; Norman, 1939, p. 116; Beebe & 



Crane, 1947, p. 169. 

 Mancalias uranoscopus triflos Roule & Angel, 1933, p. 57, pi. iii, fig. 27. 

 Mancalias shufeldti Goode & Bean, 1895, p. 490, fig. 401. 

 Typlopsaras shufeldti Gill, 1883, p. 284; Jordan, 1885, p. 138. 

 Miopsaras myops Gilbert, 1903, p. 694, pi. xlix. 

 Mancalias sessilis Imai, 1941, p. 233, fig. 12. 



Mancalias tentaculatus Norman, 1930, p. 355, fig. 45; Regan & Trewavas, 1932, p. 100. 

 Mancalias bifilis Regan & Trewavas, 1932, p. 100, pi. vi, fig. 1. 

 Ceratias tentaculatus Bertelsen, 1943, p. 203. 



Ceratias holbolli xenistius 

 Mancalias xenistius Regan & Trewavas, 1932, p. 99, pi. vi, fig. 2. 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF CERATIAS HOLBOLLI 



Bertelsen has pointed out that the oceanic expeditions have never taken large adult specimens of 

 C. holbolli. All these have come from the coastal waters of Iceland, Greenland and Nova Scotia. 

 Consequently, until Bertelsen identified the juveniles of C. holbolli and showed them to be more 

 widely distributed, the species was generally supposed to be a northern form which, unlike most 

 Ceratioids, was not markedly of bathypelagic and oceanic habit. Bertelsen found this view no longer 

 tenable and, regarding the absence of adults from oceanic collections, concluded 'the reason is, no 

 doubt, that the gear hitherto used for bathypelagic fishing has not been able to capture these larger 

 individuals '. 



The new specimen of C. holbolli was removed from a Sperm whale shot in mid-ocean in a high 

 southern latitude. It is thus the first adult specimen from oceanic waters, and its manner of capture 

 substantiates the correctness of Bertelsen's observation. It is some years since Hjort (1912, p. 36) 

 remarked ' ... the whale is still far more capable of catching living marine creatures than any scientific 

 appliance hitherto invented '. This is no less true to-day, although possible methods of the future have 

 been discussed by Kemp et al. (1939). Meanwhile it is well again to stress that routine exminations of 

 the stomach contents of Sperm whales can do much to increase our scanty knowledge of the nektonic 



