302 DEEP SEA FISHES. 
ventrals, more than half as long as the head. Caudal most often with six 
rays; occasionally there are but five, and in one case there are ten. In 
this last instance shortness of dorsal and anal indicate a mutilation similar 
to that so frequently met with in the Macruridz. The bifid maxillary with 
its spine makes an approach toward the Halosauridx that demands the addi- 
tion of this feature to those already mentioned by Alcock, 1889, Ann. Mag. 
N. H., IV, 455, as suggestive of affinities between Halosaurichthys and Nota- 
canthus, “the dorsally keeled tail with its indurations, the united ventrals, 
and the loose palatine bones.’ Scales minute, thin, adherent, cycloid, cover- 
ing head and body. Lateral line distinct, on the upper half of the flank, 
about twenty-four scales from the origin of the dorsal, or twice as many 
from that of the anal, absent on the tail for about one fourth of the total. 
Five pyloric appendages. 
On the largest specimen the color is rusty brownish red, tinted with 
bluish; blackish on the opercles and on the linings of the mouth and the 
body cavity. Smaller individuals are light brownish red. 
Total length ten inches. 
Station. Latitude, Longitude. Depth. Temperature. Bottom. 
3384 72°31 30 N. 79° 14’ W. 458 fathoms 42° F, Gn. 8. 
3354 72.9! 45 Ns 80° 50! W. 322 = 46° F. Gn. M. 
MURAENOIDS. 
The families included by this group exhibit a large amount of diversity 
in form and structure and this is accompanied by a considerable variety 
in habits. Nearly all of the species live at the bottom. Burrowing in the 
mud and more or less nocturnal the Murznoids have descended and adapted 
themselves readily to the conditions of life at great depths and from the 
consequent plasticity, brought about by reduction of the amount of inor- 
ganic materials and of firmness in the structure, thus bringing the adult and 
the aged in a measure to resemble the young or the embryo of the surface 
forms in flexibility and presumably in susceptibility to modification, they 
have become, through conscious and through unconscious efforts to adapt 
themselves to or to protect themselves from the demands of their changed 
circumstances, possessed of diversifying tendencies that have produced some 
of the strangest forms among the fishes. That the fishes of great depths 
are rather more subject to variation than those near the surface is the con- 
clusion one reaches froin a study of bathybial species. The parasitic habit, 
