ANIMALS RECENTLY EXTINCT. 647 



Iii 17G1 vessels were employed in transplanting tortoises from Rodri- 

 guez to the Duteh colony at Mauritius, where they were used iu the 

 hospital and in exchange for various commodities with the Dutch East 

 Indiam en who frequently touched there. In the early part of the pres- 

 ent century the race seems to have become extinct, and save the few 

 bones rescued from the marshes of Mauritius and the caves of Rodri- 

 guez, nothing is left to show that these large and formerly abundant 

 tortoises ever existed. 



AUTHORITIES. 



Natural History aud Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle. Charles Darwin, London, 



1876 (second edition). 

 Description of the Living and Extin t Races of Gigantic Land Tortoises. Albert 



Gunther. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of Loudon, 1875, pp. 



•251-284. 

 Remarks on the Tortoises of the Galapagos. Commander W. E. Cookson. Proc. 



Zool. Soc. Loudon, 1876, pp. 520-526. 

 Article: Tortoise. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 9th ed. Vol. xxm. pp. 455-459. 

 The Gigantic Land Tortoises of the Galapagos Islands. G. Baur. Am. Nat., Dec, 



1889 ; pp. 1039-1057. 



THE TILE FISH. 



( LoplwlaUlus ckameleonticeps.) 



The tile fish is the largest member of a small family of fishes (the 

 Latilidce), most of which are inhabitants of tropical or subtropical 

 waters, although the tile fish itself ranged northwards to the latitude 

 of Philadelphia. The tile fish was rather brilliantly colored, being 

 pale-violet above and whitish below, with numerous markings of pale 

 yellow. (Plate V.) In size it varied from five to forty pounds, and 

 it was au inhabitant of moderately deep water, being found at a depth 

 of from ninety to one hundred and twenty-five fathoms. Up to 187!) 

 the tile fish was unknown, and its discovery may be said to have been 

 accidental. In May, 1879, Captain Kirby, of the schooner Wm. V. 

 Hutching8, while trawling* for cod to the southward of Nantucket, took 

 5,000 pounds of a fish not only new to him but new to science. The 

 greater part of the fish taken on the first haul of the trawls were thrown 

 away, but as the samples that had been kept proved, on being cooked, 

 to be most excellent eating, those subsequently taken were salted down, 

 and when taken to Gloucester a portion w T as smoked. In July, 1879, 

 more tile fish were taken — this time on hand lines — by Captain Dempsey, 

 of the schooner Clara F. Friend, while trying for cod, but as there were 

 no indications of the latter being present, Captain Dempsey, who natur- 

 ally preferred to deal with fish with which he was acquainted, proceeded 

 to other grounds, in 1880 and 1881, while engaged in exploring the 



"Among American iishermen a trawl is a line from half a mile to three miles long, 

 having hooks at intervals of a few feet. In England a trawl is a net dragged aloug 

 the bottom, the mouth heiug kept extended by a long beam. 



