444 Memoir Sears Foundation for Marine Research 



recently rejected by the fishermen," was based on an unusual incursion. Only once, in 

 fact, do we find it spoken of as "frequent" in recent literature. 3* Twelve were reported 

 during the summer of 19 12 near Cape Lookout; collections for five weeks in Septem- 

 ber and October 1922, partly taken with an 1800-foot commercial seine, yielded only 

 eight in lower Chesapeake Bay; and other records for it along New Jersey, near New 

 York, and from southern Massachusetts have been based on odd individuals only. 

 We have heard of none at Woods Hole during the past ten years, though 20 were 

 taken in a trap at Waquoit a few miles to the eastward during the month of June 

 alone 36 in 1871. 



Published information, plus the considerable representation of it in museum col- 

 lections, suggests that it is more plentiful in Brazilian waters than anywhere to the north- 

 ward. However, definite information is lacking as to its numerical abundance there. 



Relation to Man. It is not plentiful enough anywhere to be of importance to fisher- 

 men, whether positively as a potential source of human food or negatively as an enemy 

 of shellfish beds. 



Range. Continental waters of the western Atlantic from middle Brazil to New York 

 and as a stray to southern Massachusetts and Cape Cod. 



Details of Occurrence. Caution is called for in outlining the range of the two species 

 of Myliobatis in the western Atlantic because of the possibility that some of the nominal 

 reports o( M. freminvillii may have been based on M. goodei, so closely do the two species 

 resemble one another in general appearance. 



Descriptions or illustrations of the specimens concerned, or recent examination of 

 them, establish the presence oi M. freminvillii, as contrasted with M. goodei, at the follow- 

 ing localities, south to north: Rio de Janeiro; vicinity of Cape Lookout, North Carolina; 

 Chesapeake Bay; eastern shore of Virginia; Maryland; Sea Island City, New Jersey; 

 Noank, Connecticut; Rhode Island; vicinity of Woods Hole and Provincetown at 

 the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In view of the fact that South Carolina is the 

 most northerly station where M. goodei has certainly been found (see Study Material, 

 p. 446), it is highly probable that the considerable number of nominal reports for 

 M. freminvillii by name only from North Carolina, the Atlantic Coast of Maryland, 

 New Jersey, New York, Narragansett Bay, Buzzards Bay, and Woods Hole do actu- 

 ally refer to freminvillii. 



The most interesting feature of its known range is that it seems never to have been 

 recorded with proof of identity from the northern coast of South America; from the 

 Caribbean; from the southern or northern Gulf of Mexico ;3* from anywhere among the 

 West Indies; or from Florida. But we suspect that this latitudinal gap of approximately 

 2,400 miles in its established range indicates merely that its presence has been over- 

 looked, for we have found nothing to separate the Brazilian specimens studied from 

 others taken at various localities along the coasts of the United States. 



34. Fowler (Proc. biol. Soc. Wash., 33, 1920: 146), off Cape May County, New Jersey. 



35. Lyman, Rep. Mass. Comm. inl. Fish., 1872: 53. 



36. There are nominal reports of it for Galveston, Texas and for Mexico; see Probable References, p. 446. 



