1100 



SCANDINAVIAN FISHES. 



to the extreme end of the margin of the iiectoral fin. Museum, but witli tlie tail l)rol<en oft' short), which 

 Whether more Sting-Kays liave been found on the coast ! had certainly been in Linn.eus's iiaiids, Ijut is jirobably 



of Scandinavia, we are ignorant; but Retzius included 

 the species in his edition of Linn.els's Fauna Suecica: 

 and the Museum of Drottninghohn contained a speci- 

 men about 6 dm. long (now preserved in the Royal 



..^f^ 



of foreign origin, as he did not personally recognise 

 the species as Swedish. The last-mentioned specimen 

 is represented in the appended figure. 



f ^ 



Fig. 314. Trygon pastiiiaca, 9) 'i.) ^^^- size; a, caudal spine, uat. size. From the Museum Adolphi Friderici. 



Tail depressed^ frith dermal edge on the sides, ffat underneath, conre.v on the top, and furnished u'ith two dorsal 

 fns, with or without caudal fin. The pectoral fins extend forward to the snout or even in front of the rostral 

 cartilage. Where electric organs are present, they lie on the sides of the fail. No spear-like spine on the tail. 



As we have remarked aliove, these fishes, the fa- 

 mily of the true Rays, in sjnte of the singular deve- 

 lopment of the pectoral fins, deviate less than the 

 preceding families from the form of body tj'pical of 

 tlie Sharks. A distinct expression of this is given by 

 the arrangement of the nostrils and tlie nasal valvule. 

 Each nostril is indeed continued here too I)y a groove 

 to the corner of the mouth; ))ut the nostrils are farther 

 apart, and the nasal valvule coalesces throughout the 

 greater part of its inner surface with the bottom of 

 the snout, so that in many cases only its posterior 

 lateral corners foi'in free dermal Haps. 



The stronger tiatteniiig of the bodv, especiallv of 

 the head, imparts to the eyes, as we have mentioned 

 above, a more horizontal jjosition; l)ut they are ijro- 

 tected above by an expansion of the frontal skin, and 

 to mitigate the excessive brilliancy of the light, the 

 upper m;irgin of tlie iris is prolongated in most of the 

 species into finger-shaped processes partly covering the 

 pupil. 



The family as a whole — it is dispersed round the 

 globe from the troitical to the frigid zones — is about 

 as varied in form as the preceding one, but in our seas 

 more so; and its members are often difficult to distin- 



