Fishes of the JVestern North Atlantic 217 



Developmental Stages. Neither the egg cases nor the newly hatched young of 

 R.jenseni have been seen. 



Habits. The localities and depths of capture indicate that R.jenseni lives at rather 

 higher temperatures (3.6-3.9° C, or 38-39° F) than does R. hyperborea; that it is 

 strictly a deep-water species, finding its upper limit at or below 200 fathoms, otherwise 

 fishermen would almost certainly pick it up along the upper slopes of the Banks; and 

 that its range almost certainly extends down to a depth of at least 1,200-1,300 fathoms.*^ 

 The nature of its teeth suggests that it feeds chiefly on active prey such as small fishes 

 and free-swimming Crustacea, as its relative R. hyperborea is known to do. 



Range. R.jenseni is known only from the offing of Halifax, Nova Scotia in 200 

 fathoms and from the lower part of the continental slope ofi-" Georges Bank and southern 

 New England in 1,043-1,255 fathoms, at the localities listed (p. 213). But its range, 

 if governed by distribution of water temperature (3-4° C, 37-39° F) at the consider- 

 able depths at which they have been taken, may well extend much farther south, for 

 the bottom water is of about that temperature all along the lower part of the conti- 

 nental slope from the southeastern corner of the Newfoundland Banks to the offing of 

 northern Argentina. 



Synonyms and References: 



Raja jenseni Bigelow and Schroeder, Bull. Mus. comp. Zool. Harv., JOJ, 1950: 385 (descr., ill.). 



Raja granulata Jensen, Mindeskr. Steenstr. Fods. Kbh., 2 (30), 1914: 31 (off Halifax, N.Scotia, 42°37' N, 

 62°55' W, 200 fath., cf. R. spinicauda); Bigelow and Schroeder, Bull. Mus. comp. Zool. Harv., 68, 

 1927: 246 (descr., meas., same spec, as Jensen, 1914, off Halifax, Nova Scotia); Canad. Atlant. Fauna, 

 126, 1934: 29 (descr., ill. of same specimen as in Jensen, 1914, and Bigelow and Schroeder, 1927, off 

 Halifax, Nova Scotia; but LaHave Bank ref. is to R. granulata Goode and Bean 1879, equals R. laevis 

 Mitchill 1 8 17); Bull. U. S. Bur. Fish., 48, 1936: 323, footnote (ref. to old record off Halifax, Nova 

 Scotia); Vladykov, Nat. canad., 6j, 1936: 212, 228 (suggests R. granulata ident. with R. hyperborea). 



Raja granulata (in part) Vladykov and McKenzie, Proc. N. S. Inst. Sci., ig, 1935: 51 (off Halifax, but ref. 

 for LaHave Bank is to R. granulata Goode and Bean 1879, equals R. laevis Mitchill 18 17). 



Raja laevis Mitchill 1817*2 



Barndoor Skate, Sharp-nosed Skate 



Figures 47, 48 



Study Material. Thirty-one specimens, male and female, 7^/5 to 52 inches long, 

 from Nahant and Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Georges Bank, Nantucket Shoals, the 

 continental shelf 70-80 miles southward from Marthas Vineyard, 50 miles east-south- 

 east of Chesapeake Bay, and the offing of Charleston, South Carolina, in the collections 

 of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and the U. S. National Museum; 



41. It seems safe to assume that the two specimens for which depths of 1,043 ^"d 1,255 fathoms are recorded were in 

 fact picked up by the trawl on the bottom or close to it. 



42. Garman (Mem. Harv. Mus. comp. Zool., 36, 1913: 341, 342) substituted the name stabuliforis for this Skate to re- 

 place lae'vis on the ground that the latter had been preoccupied by Gronow (1763), Valmont (1768), and Duhamel 

 (1782) for other species. But Valmont's and Gronow 's names have been ruled out by the International Commission 

 on Zoological Nomenclature (Opin. 89, Smithson. misc. Coll., 73 [3], 1925: 27), and Duhamel's names cannot 

 be taken into account because, when binominal, they were so only incidentally. 



