1 2 The Field Naturalist's Quarterly Feb. 



none is surely more singular than this electric discharge, 

 sudden and paralysing, reducing to a state of helplessness 

 large and swift fishes that the torpedo would be otherwise 

 quite incapable of either catching or overcoming. Nature 

 does not waste the talents that she has to distribute. The 

 torpedo, it is true, stands alone among British fishes in this 

 conspicuous electric power (though the late Matthias Dunn, 

 of Mevagissey, most gifted of fish students, once told the 

 writer that he suspected a measure of the same power in 

 most of the rays), but the gift has to compensate it for weak 

 teeth and slow-moving fins. The fierce, swift sharks need 

 no such aid in the capture of their prey ; and the flat-fish, as 

 slow as most of their class, are able to lie unrecognisable 

 half-buried in the sand, and suck in such worms and shrimps 

 as approach too near their twisted mouths. The torpedo, 

 however, requires substantial food, and indeed the use of its 

 electric organs, almost superseding that of its rudimentary 

 teeth, is evident from the fact of fishes as large as salmon of 

 4 lb. or 5 lb. having been taken whole, and apparently un- 

 scathed, from the inside of one of these rays. Many of the 

 rays have some distinctive weapon of offence or defence : in 

 the thornback and starry ray there are the curved spikes 

 studding the back and fins ; in the sting-ray and whip-ray 

 there is the fearful saw-edged dagger in the tail. It seems 

 improbable that such monsters can have many natural 

 enemies ; yet, however effective the dagger in the tail may 

 be in securing food, one can hardly imagine a similar use 

 for the spikes on the back. But there may, in the depths of 

 the sea, be enemies even of the rays. It is all very well to 

 congratulate ourselves on knowing all the fishes that dwell 

 in comparatively shallow waters, but it must, in the first 

 place, be remembered that even the rays may at certain 

 seasons wander considerable distances from our coasts ; and, 

 for the rest, when we have to wait until the twentieth cen- 

 tury for Sir Harry Johnstone to discover a new quadruped 

 of considerable size in the jungle of Central Africa, who 

 shall say what unknown monsters lurk, out of reach of hook 

 or trawl, in the open sea ? 



Space is running out, and a very few words must suffice 

 for the two remaining candidates for present notice. 



Of the Lesser Weever {Trachimis vipcra) the uncommon- 



