49 



and tapering to the large caudal : its greatest height is about one-third the 

 length of the head. 



The snout is broad, much depressed, and spathulate, resembling the bill of 

 Bathypterois ; its extreme length is a little more than the major diameter of the 

 orbit which is about one-fourth the extreme length of the head. Mouth-cleft 

 wide, slightly oblique, the maxilla reaching nearly to the vertical through the 

 middle of the eye, and ending in a fleshy horizontally-disposed barbel. Teeth 

 in villiform bands on the jaws, vomer, and palatines. Tongue large, spathulate. 



The large eyes are placed close together on the summit of the head, separ- 

 ated from each other by a narrow groove ; but the visual axis is lateral. The 

 gill-cleft is very wide, the gill-membranes being free of the isthmus throughout : 

 the preopercular angle is spinate, and the operculum, which is prolonged in 

 membrane nearly to the level of the 4th dorsal spine, has two spines above, and 

 one belonging to the suboperculum below. Four gills with setiform gill-rakers 

 and broad laminae : pseudobranchi^ large. 



The body, and the head and the snout above, are covered with rather large 

 cycloid or finely ctenoid scales. The lateral line beginning on the occiput as a 

 close-set row of weak re-curved spines, or strongly carinated scales, curves in- 

 wards towards the first dorsal fin and then downwards along the lower half of 

 the tail, being salient but unarmed in this part of its course. 



The first dorsal fin is short, and is separated from the second by four or 

 five rows of scales : the second, which is much more elevated than the first, 

 extends from the level of the vent to within an eye-length of the base of the 

 caudal. The anal fin is similar to the second dorsal. The pectorals are large 

 and long and reach to, or even beyond, the origin of the anal. The ventrals 

 arise an eye-length in front of the pectorals and reach half-way to the anal. 



Three rather large pyloric cseca. 



Colours in spirit, yellowish brown with thirteen incomplete and indefinite 

 darker cross-bands : a golden-green ocellus on the crown of the head and one in 

 the apex of each opercle, but all these ocelli tend to fade away : spinous dorsal 

 white at the base, black in the upper half. 



In the young there is a large oval black and white ocellus in the upper part 

 of the basal half of the caudal fin ; but this gets broken up in older individuals. 



An adult female in the Indian Museum is 8^ inches lono-. 



2 *= 



In the Indian Museum are 14 specimens from off the Coromandel coast 107 



and 128 fathoms, from the Gulf of Manar 143 fathoms, and from the Andaman 



Sea 185 and 194 fathoms : [also a specimen labelled Hypsicometes gohioides from 



the Gulf of Mexico 280 fathoms] . 



Regd. Nos. 13437, 13493, 13494: ^^^> -[^ ^^^- 



