PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 51 



N. and longitude 30 W. It was discovered afloat about tweutj" yards 

 from the vessel. A boat was hoisted out for the purpose of raising it. 

 The creature was raised from the water without any resistance, and died 

 in fifteen minutes after being taken on board." 



" When first seen, the belly was distended, as if blown up to the size 

 of a quart decanter, or the crown of a hat. The stomach contained a 

 fish ten inches long, which, from its sound state, appeared to have been 

 recently swallowed. That fish was not preserved. 



" The length was six feet ; of which fourteen inches belonged to the 

 body, or the space between the extremity of the upper lip beneath to 

 the vent. The tail was fiagelliform, or like the lash of a whip, and grad- 

 ually tapered away in the course of fifty -eight inches to a point. To- 

 ward the end it was flexible enough to be tied into knots, after the 

 manner of a string or a cord." (P. 84.) 



" The distance Irom the mouth to the vent was fourteen inches. All 

 the rest of the length, amounting to fifty-eight inches, tapered away 

 gradually from an inch in depth almost to a x^oint." (P. 84.) 



" The skin was smooth and scaleless, and susceptible of being easily 

 moved and pinched up, like that of some species of Lophius." (P. 84.) 

 " Filiform processes^ or excrescences, about an inch in length, depended 

 on each side of the whitish stripe [along the side of the fish] all the way 

 from the head doum to the back of the tail. The space between them is 

 nearly an inch, so that they probably amounted to fifty pairs. These 

 cirrhi or threads have no expansion or enlargement at their extremities." 

 (P. So.) 



^^ The head teas smaller than is usual in fish. It would seem that its 

 principal use was to give origin and insertion to the bones and muscles 

 of the jaws. At its foremost point is a small knob or projection forward 

 of the eyes ; and from it proceeded a sort of fra^num sustaining the 

 upper lip. From this inconsiderable head proceeded the vertebral 

 column, which, in its progress to the tail, gradually tapered away and 

 seemed to lose its hones and joints, arid to be converted into a sort of tough 

 and grisly appe)cdage.^'' (Pp. 8o, 84.) 



"The eyes were situated about half an inch from the point of the 

 upper jaw, one on each side, and looking forward. They were small, 

 and did not exceed in diameter the sixteenth of an inch." (P. 83.) 



" The mouth had an enormous gape; and the throat, for the space of 

 six inches, was but a membranous bag. It was capacious enough to 

 receive ray hand without difficulty. The internal surface was black. 

 There was no appearance of a tongue. 



" From the upper part of the mouth, or the spot where the upper 

 maxillary bones unite, to the angle of the jaw, was three inches, and 

 from that angle to the tip of the lower jaw, three inches. 



" The symjyhysis of the chin had a very flexible joint, that icas capable of 

 opening or expanding from a most acute angle to a right line, or as nenrly 

 so as the curvature of the bones permitted. This construction, with a 



