1913] Some Beaufort, N. C, Fishes 171 



Carolinas. However, at Cape Lookout Coles captured a dozen 

 specimens during July, 1910. These are all deposited in the 

 American Museum of Natural History. A few were taken in 

 1911. 



Astroscopus y-graecum (Cuvier and Valenciennes). 

 Electric Star-gazer. 



The electric star-gazer, the ^'electric toad" of the fishermen, 

 is occasionally taken at Beaufort and the laboratory museum 

 has several specimens. ISTone however reach the size of the 15- 

 inch individual taken with the spear by Coles in July, 1910. 

 Two other small ones were also captured by him. The present 

 writer on July 14, 1904, in the inner harbor at Beaufort col- 

 lected a young one only 2^ inches long. This w^as much 

 darker in color than the adults and lacked the spots. 



The writer has seen the star-gazer, by convulsive movements 

 of its body, bury itself in the sand at the bottom of an aquarium 

 until only its mouth and eyes were visible. The water pumped 

 through the mouth and over the gills escaped on each side 

 through a conical depression in the sand above the hinder edge 

 of each opercle. Since the fish lie thus imbedded in the sand, 

 the lead lines of the seines pass over them readily and few are 

 taken. Consequently but little idea of their relative abundance 

 can be formed. 



The electric organs are in the head back of and between the 

 eyes. These are said to give shocks more powerful in propor- 

 tion to their size than those of any other electric fish, but Coles 

 reports that he found their power much weaker than that of 

 the corresponding organs of Narcine hrasiliensis. 



State Normal College, Greensboro, N. C. 



LITERATURE CITED 



1910 — Aller, Henry D. The Work of the Marine Biological Station of 

 the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries at Beaufort, N. C, during the 

 year 1909. Science, May 6, 1910. 



1911 — Bean, B. A. and Weed, A. C. An Electric Ray and its Young 

 from the West Coast of Florida. Proceedings U. S. Nation- 

 al Museum, vol. XL, pp. 231-32, plates 10-11. 



