CHAPTER ONE 



Sawfishes^ Guitarfishes, 

 Skates and Rays^ 



BY 

 HENRY B. BIGELOW and WILLIAM C. SCHROEDER 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



Many persons have assisted us in the preparation of the following pages. Our thanks 

 are due in particular to Leonard P. Schu/tz and to A. S. Romer for allowing us 

 free access to the collections of the United States National Museum and of the Har- 

 vard Museum of Comparative Zoology, which have been the chief sources of our 

 Study Material; to the authorities of the British Museum (Natural History), the 

 American Museum of Natural History, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- 

 delphia, the Boston Society of Natural History, the Chicago Museum of Natural 

 History, the Charleston Museum, South Carolina, and the Museum of Zoology, 

 University of Michigan, for the loan of much needed material; to the Woods Hole 

 Oceanographic Institution for constant assistance ; to Stewart Springer who has con- 

 tributed a large amount of valuable information and many specimens of Skates, Rays 

 and Chimaeras from Florida and the Gulf of Mexico ; to Anton Fr. Bruun for the 

 loan of rhinochimaeroid material collected by the Atlantide Expedition from deep 

 water off equatorial West Africa ; to J. L. Baughman for Sawfishes, Guitarfishes, 

 and other specimens from the Gulf of Mexico ; to Gordon Gunter for Guitarfishes 

 from Texas ; to Michael Lerner and C. M. Breder for obtaining two specimens of 

 M.zntzfor us at Bimini, Bahamas, and to Ivor Cornman for arranging to have parts 

 of them shipped to Cambridge ; to William Royce and the scientific staff of the 



I. Contribution No. 570 from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 



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