364 Survey of Fishing- Grounds, West Coast of Ireland, 1890—1891. 



comment. However, if we can prove that our western coast is the meeting-place 

 of the two faunas,* it may be of more interest. 



The littoral waters having been fairly well explored, we hardly expected to 

 be able to add much to our knowledge on this point, and our discovery of Aphia 

 pelliicida and Crystallogohiiis Nilssonii, though interesting as additions to the Irish 

 list, only seems to show that these forms, common to Norwegian and Mediterranean 

 waters, are, as might be expected, not absent from the intermediate localities. 

 The latter, indeed, has since been found to be very abundant on the eastern and 

 south-western coasts of England. 



Unquestionably a moi'e important addition to the Irish list is that of Gobius 

 Friesii, a species only known hitherto from Scandinavian waters, and the capture 

 of no less than four examples of Arnoglossiis Grohmanni is not without interest, 

 since it serves to prove that this Mediterranean fish, of which only two examples 

 had previously been taken in British waters, is more generally distributed than was 

 sujjposed. Rhombus norvegicus, a Scandinavian form which we were able to add to 

 the Irish list, had already been recorded from a more southern point in English 

 waters, and has since been found to be rather plentiful on the coast of Cornwall. 



When we turn to the deep-sea fishes we get more interesting, or, at least, more 

 novel results. So much yet remains to be done in the field of deep-sea exploration 

 that we are not warranted in insisting too strongly upon the localization of species 

 living at a depth where the climatic conditions of the surface are little, if at all, 

 felt; nevertheless, making use of such knowledge as we possess, the mixture of 

 northern and southern species in the composition of the bathybial fish-fauna of 

 our western coast is very striking. Thus, from the south we have Centrophorus 

 squamosus, Pomatomus telescopium, Hoplostethus mediterraneus, Gadus argenteus, 

 Macrurus cequalis, M. Icevis, and Rhombus Boscii, as it were in the same haul with 

 the northern Gadus EsmarJcii, Haloporphjrus eques, and Macrurus rupestris, not to 

 speak of other forms more generally known. 



Scorpoena dactyloptera and, perhaps, Macrurus coelorhynchus are forms which 

 have been found both in Norwegian and Lusitanian waters, while Argentina 

 sphyroena seems to be fairly cosmopolitan. Pristiurus melanostoma, a common 

 littoral form in the Mediterranean, proves to be with us, as in Norway, confined 

 to deep water. The same apjjlies to a great extent to Phycis blennioides, although 

 we certainly took one example in quite shallow water, and the species is known 

 to occur in the North Sea at depths far short of one hundred fathoms. 



Gunther f was the first to direct attention to the fact that certain forms 

 {e.g. Gadus, sp.) which inhabit the littoi-al region in the northern latitudes are 



* Professor HacWon has already called attention to the same fact in the case of certain groups of 

 invertebrates. 



t " Study of Fishes," Edin., 1880, p. 265. 



