THE MAHSRER AND THE MURREL IN CEYLON. 21 



observation. The result of this graduated oviposition is that the 

 mahseer, unlike the spent salmon, never becomes so emaciated as 

 to be unfit for human food. 



It may be useful to sportsmen and naturalists living in out- 

 stations to explain the manner in which the mahseer in 

 particular, and freshwater fishes in general, may be identified. 



The mahseer may be recognized in the open by its fighting 

 qualities, and in the laboratory or museum by the arrangement of 

 its scales. Down each side of the body from the gill region to 

 the tail fin there is one row of scales, which exhibits a series of 

 minute perforations. These are the orifices of small tubular 

 sensory organs composing the so-called lateral line apparatus, 

 which is innervated by a special branch of the tenth cranial nerve 

 known as the lateral line nerve. 



The number of scales in the lateral line is an important 

 diagnostic feature in the determination of any species of fish, 

 taken, naturally, in conjunction with its other characters, e.g.^ 

 presence or absence of teeth, presence or absence of barbels, 

 number of fin-rays in the fins, especially in the dorsal and anal 

 fins. The mahseer has no jaw teeth ; it has two pairs of barbels, 

 twelve rays in the dorsal fin, of which the first three are osseous 

 (the first very small), seven or eight rays in the anal fin, of which 

 the first two or three are osseous, and twenty -four or twenty-five 

 scales in the lateral line.* The tail fin is forked. In the middle 

 line of the back there are nine scales in front of the dorsal fin. 

 The body is elongated, the height being equal to about one- fourth 

 of the length excluding the caudal fin. 



Just as the mahseer, from an angling point of view, takes the 

 place, in India and Ceylon, of the salmon of the West, so the 

 murrel may be regarded as representing the pike in the economy 

 of the inland waters, although all these fishes belong to totally 

 distinct families. 



The murrel or liila {pphioceplmlus striatus) is a large, nearly 

 black, somewhat flat-headed fish, with long, many-rayed dorsal 

 and anal fins and rounded tail fin (see fig. 2 facing p. 5). The 

 dorsal and anal fins end abruptly behind and are not continuous 

 with the tail fin. The lateral line does not extend in a straight 

 line from the gill region of the head to the tail, but is bent 

 downwards over two rows of scales at the level of the twelfth 

 dorsal fin-ray, and is thence continued to the base of the tail fin. 

 The Indian murrel attains a length of 2 to 3 feet. The Colombo 

 Museum has a specimen of the Ceylon murrel with total length of 



* In the case of the Indian Mahseer the number of scales in the lateral line is 

 twenty-five to twenty-seven according to Giinther and Day. 



