684 Gobioidei, Discocephali, and Tzniosomi 
few spines are very long, each having a red tuft on the end. 
When the animal is alive these spines stand up like a red 
mane. 
The creature is harmless, weak in muscle as well as feeble 
in mind. It lives in the deep seas, all over the world. After 
great storms it sometimes comes ashore. Perhaps this is 
because for some reason it has risen abeve its depth and so 
lost control of itself. When a deep-water fish rises to the surface 
the change of pressure greatly affects it. Reduction of pressure 
bursts its blood-vessels, its swim-bladder swells, if it has one, 
and turns its stomach inside out. If a deep-water fish gets 
above its depth it is lost, just as surely as a surface fish is when 
it gets sunk to the depth of half a mile. 
Sometimes, again, these deep-sea fishes rush to the shore 
to escape from parasites, crustaceans that torture their soft 
flesh, or sharks that would tear it. 
Numerous specimens have been found in the Pacific, and 
to these several names have been given, but the species are 
not at all clearly made out. The oldest name is that of Regalecus 
russelli, for the naturalist Patrick Russell, who took a specimen 
at Vizagapatam in 1788. I have seen two large examples of 
Regalecus in the museum at Tokio, and several young ones 
have recently been stranded on the Island of Santa Catalina 
in southern California. A specimen twenty-two feet long lately 
came ashore at Newport in Orange County, California. The 
story of its capture is thus told by Mr. Horatio J. Forgy, of 
Santa Ana, California: 
‘‘On the 22d of February, 1901, a Mexican Indian reported 
at Newport Beach that about one mile up the coast he had 
landed a sea-serpent, and as proof showed four tentacles and 
a strip of flesh about six feet long. A crowd went up to see 
it, and they said it was about twenty feet long and like a fish 
in some respects and like a snake in others. Mr. Remsberg 
and I, on the following day, went up to see it, and in a short 
time we gathered a crowd and with the assistance of Mr. Pea- 
body prepared the fish and took the picture you have received. 
“It measured twenty-one feet and some inches in length, 
and weighed about 500 or 600 pounds. 
“The Indian, when he reported his discovery, said it was 
