Deew. — Natural History Notes. 287 



parasites that infested this fish. They spoke of huge knots of 

 tape-hke worms as " big as two fists," masses matted together 

 of round smooth worms of several kinds ; and in the gills, 

 mouth, or anywhere they could fasten were parasitical crus- 

 taceans, " flat, crab-like fellows with long tails." Unfortu- 

 nately, these " beastly things " were carefully collected and 

 thrown into the sea before we arrived, nor could they under- 

 stand that we should wish to save such things. After gaining 

 this small amount of information, we engaged three men, who 

 with ourselves made a start to remove the skin. This occu- 

 pied three days, working all the hours of daylight. On Friday 

 the work was sufficiently far advanced to get the skin into a 

 cask, so that we could bring it and the skeleton home for 

 further treatment. It was a most unpleasant task to all. It 

 was not skinning as one would skin any other fish, mammal, 

 or bird, but we found it was all the time cutting a hard gristly 

 substance that very quickly turned the edges of the sharpest 

 knives, blistering our hands that had already been made sore 

 by the cutting roughness of the skin. 



There being so many cuts as well as pieces missing, I 

 found I could only mount it as a half-fish, so I patched up the 

 one side with pieces from the other. 



This fish seems to be one of the largest caught so 

 far. Most of the books I have on this subject mention the 

 British Museum specimen as of greatest size, but this only 

 measures 8ft. 6in. from tip to tip of fins. Mr. Etheridge, 

 the curator of the Australian Museum, Sydney, writes, 

 " It may perhaps interest you to know that our largest 

 specimen, stranded at Manly, Port Jackson, is 8ft. Sin. long 

 by lift, deep — i.e., from tip to tip of fins." 



Mr. Hamilton, in "Transactions of the New Zealand 

 Institute," vol. xviii., page 136, gives the measurement of one 

 stranded near Napier as 8ft. l^in. in length. 



Archdeacon- Williams mentions a sun-fish in the " Trans- 

 actions of the New Zealand Institute," vol. xxv., page 110, 

 the total length of which was 9ft. 8in., and depth from tip to 

 tip of fins lift. 6iiu. The w^eight of this fish was guessed at 

 3^ tons, but I think this must be an error in judgment, as our 

 larger fish weighed but little more than half. 



The latest capture is the one in the Dunedin Museum. 

 Mr. Hamilton has kindly sent jue photographs, but not the 

 measurements. I trust it will be noted in the Trans- 

 actions. 



''l/X 





