RAJA BADIA. 25 
tral surface, where there is more of white than of brown. Length of the 
type about 20.4 inches. “Taken in lat. about 80° N., at sea, west of the 
northern coast of Spitzbergen, the most northerly locality, too, in which 
this genus is yet known to occur.” 
Among the known species of the genus the closest affinities of Raia badia 
apparently are not found in the species of the more immediate vicinage of 
its habitat, but rather with those noted above from the seas around the 
Farées or northward and through them with the thornback of the eastern 
coasts of the United States, a variety of Raia radiata Don. With R. equato- 
rialis J. B., 1889, taken by the “ Albatross” between the Galapagos Islands 
and Ecuador, it does not appear to be very closely related, and the same 
statement may be made concerning species in northern waters off the coasts 
of North America to Alaska. Its affinities with the southern forms, of 
Chili and Patagonia, are only remote; Raia brachyura Giint. approaches 
as much as any of them, yet it is very different, and none of those from 
the eastern coasts of South America makes a nearer approach. Imme- 
diately across the isthmus also no very close kinship is to be noticed in 
either R. Ackleyi Garm., 1881, from the Yucatan Banks, or &. alia nom. 
sp. n., from the northern portion of the Gulf of Mexico. The specific desig- 
nation aia alia is here first applied to the type figured by Goode and Bean 
in 1896, Oceanic Ichthyology, Pl. VIL, fig. 23, under the title Raiw Ackley. 
R. alia differs from that species in lacking the wide space between the 
dorsals, in having closely set spinules on tail and back, in having a group 
of tubercles on the middle of the back, in having tubercles on the crown 
between the orbital series, in having series of tubercles on the lateral edges 
of the disk, and in the lack of spots on the upper surface, particularly in 
the lack of the large transversely oblong spot of brown on each pectoral 
opposite the forward part of the abdominal cavity. Still farther removed 
are R. ornata Garm., 1881, taken by the “ Blake” off Alligator key, Florida, 
or R. plutonia Garm., 1881, taken by the same vessel off the coasts of South 
Carolina. In this connection it may be pointed out that the skate figured 
by Goode and Bean, 1896, Oc. Ich., Pl. VII., No. 24, as 2. ornata is not of 
that species but is a very young specimen of R. plutonia or an allied form. 
