LAMPRIS LAUTA. 33 



described by MM. Cuvler and Valenciennes. Tlie diameter of the eye was one- 

 fifth of the length of the head. The pectoral fins were rather longer than before ; 

 measuring something less than one fourth part, instead of a quarter more than one 

 fourth part of the whole length. The ventral fins were one fourth part, and the 

 high front part of the dorsal fin was scarcely one fifth part of the whole length of 

 the fish. The anal fin was neither raised in front, nor had any trace of " a tri- 

 angular scale" before it. Not only was the tongue perfectly smooth all the way 

 down, as far back as the pharyngeal plates, but all the bases of the branchial arches 

 are less aculeate than in most fishes, and merely scabrous. The pharyngeal plates 

 at the entrance of the oesophagus or gullet, are six above, and two beneath, furnish- 

 ed with strong, sharp, white, recurved teeth, directed down the throat, which it 

 were scarcely possible to mistake and describe as pertaining to the tongue. 



On opening the fish, the small extent, and great apparent height of situation in 

 the body of the abdominal cavity, owing to the enormous depth below it of the 

 breast-bone (cubital), are remarkable. The viscera are altogether small in propor- 

 tion. The air-bladder appeared small and inconspicuous ; but having been unfor- 

 tunately ruptured, its shape could not be ascertained ; the liver was rather small, 

 and of a very pale fawn-colour. The stomach was of a most peculiar columnar 

 shape, perfectly cylindric, and of the same diameter with the long oesophagus, 

 elongate, and very obscurely bilobed at the hinder end, one of the lobes being the 

 pylorus, which is thus subterminal, and from the neck of which originates an enor- 

 mous mass of ca^ca, forming a dense compact or fleshy gland, of an oblong shape, 

 and as long as the stomach, with which it is connected closely all its length by cel- 

 lular tissue ; lying parallel to it, and reaching forward to the liver or oesophagus. 

 In colour and consistence it resembles a mass of lung. The intestine is short and 

 simple, issuing from the middle of the mass of cceca, and proceeding thence without 

 volution to the vent. The ovaria were small and empty. 



In this union of the oBca into a single fleshy gland, more completely than in 

 the Tunny, there is a curious and unexpected analogy with the Sharks and Stur- 

 geons. In Lampris, this organ appears to be completely in an intermediate or 

 transitional state from Cceca to Pancreas or spleen ; just as it does in the Stur- 

 geons or Stiirionidce.* 



The fin formula, &c. in this example was 



6 -f 1 + IX 



D. 1 -I- 52 ; A. 1 -I- 4 ; P. 1 -|- 24 ; V. 16 ; C. - 



6 -f I -f VII 



M. B. 6 ; Vert. 24 abd. + 21 caud. == 45 ; weight eighty-five pounds. It was captured April 

 25th, 1839. 



In another female, taken March the 30th, full of roe, and measuring 

 three feet and half an inch in length, 



The depth was exactly half the length : the head ten inches long, or rather 

 more than half the depth, and one-tliird and three-fifths of the whole length. 

 Thus it was intermediate in these proportions between the first and last examples 

 above described. The eye was a little larger than in either ; its diameter being 

 contained only four times and four-ninths in the length of the head, though this 

 last was also rather longer than in the first-described example. The pectoral fins 

 were contained four times, and the ventral fins three and three-fifths in the whole 



* See Cuv. R. An. 1^ ed. ii. 379, 381, and 384.— Cuv. and Val. Hist. i. 502, 503. 



