BOO REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1802. 



I had put li i in up to stay put, so far as my part was concerned, so he just got mad 

 and literally tore himself to tatters. He became almost a total wreck, and to make 

 my defeat a more genuine and unmitigated crusher. Prof. Ward sent word tome, 

 all the way from Washington, that he would sell me that large ray for $5. I never 

 forgave him for that. 



The best way to mount a ray is to make a nice plaster east of it, paint it, and then 

 bury the. accursed ray in a compost heap. As a class these fishes are remarkable, and 

 highly interesting, and there is a far greater variety of them than anyone who is not 

 an ichthyologist might suppose. To me there is no other group of fishes moreinter- 

 esting, and, I may add, there is no other group that is, as a general thing, so poorly 

 represented in museum collections. They exhibit all possible intermediate forms 

 between the ordinary shark and the perfectly round, Hat ray. The intermediate 

 forms, Rhinobatii and Rhamphobatis, are naturally really the most interesting.* 



Some very fine plaster of-Paris casts of fishes of all kinds are to be 

 found in the collections of the U. S. National Museum, but as has just 

 been remarked, for some reason or other the rays are but meagerly rep- 

 resented. These fishes, however, cast beautifully in plaster, and their 

 colors are not difficult to imitate. It would be hard, for example, to 

 find a more fitting specimen for museum exhibition than the plaster 

 cast of the skate shown in Plate xx of the present paper. The plastic 

 method also reproduces them with even greater fidelity, audit has the 

 advantage of not being near so easily injured or broken. So perfect are 

 these two methods that I will warrant that were we to take the living 

 skate, the gelatine and plaster casts, make photographs of them all of 

 the same scale and under the same conditions as the one seen in my 

 plate, we could only with the greatest difficulty distinguish among 

 them. 



Not only is it possible to reproduce life-like representations of living 



fishes by means of the plaster-of- Paris cast, but to a certain degree we 

 can also, by the same means, show some of the habits of this interest- 

 ing group of vertebrates. A fine examnle of this is seen in Plate xxi of 

 this report, wherein we are presented with a most excellent cast of a 

 shark (CarcharMnus obscurus) to whose left side has attached itself a 

 Remora (Mcheneis nnucrates), a habit this parasitic fish is habitually 

 addicted to, as is well-known. This fine piece of work, done by Mr. 

 Joseph Palmer, of the museum, has been colored very closely to imitate 

 life, and is not only a most interesting and instinctive object to have on 

 exhibition in any zoological museum, but leaves but little to be desired 

 in the matter of conveying a correct idea of the form and general appear- 

 ance of these fishes, and in a method at once practical and, with care, 

 enduring. The mode of mounting such specimens is also seen in the 

 figures in the plates, and it probably can not very well be improved 

 upon, consisting as it does of two strong metal upright standards of 

 the proper length, and which are embedded below in the horizontal 

 base or stand of wood. This latter may be either plain pine, painted 

 black and heavily varnished, or it may be of any of the dark, hard 



Taxidermy, pp. 215, 216. 



