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



the coast of Portugal, and at 218 fathoms in the Bay of Biscay; while Smitt 

 mentions an example in the Royal Museum of Norway, said to have been taken at 

 100 to 200 fathoms, o£P the Jutland Reef. It is, therefore, in accordance with the 

 plan of this Paper, placed amongst the deep-sea fishes ; whereas C. maculatus, 

 though not improbably more bathybial in its general distribution on our own 

 coasts, has to be relegated to the littoral species ; a circumstance which sufficiently 

 illustrates the difficulty of drawing a hard-and-fast distinction between the two 

 classes. 



It is noted by Dr. Giinther* that the mature male is not found in such shallow 

 water as the female or young ; and our own experience supports the general 

 accuracy of this statement. We have, however, received a fully mature male 

 from Tetney, a part of the Humber estuary where the depth is, at the most, five 

 fathoms. Dayf states that the fish " does not appear to congregate in shoals," a 

 remark which applies, if at all, only to the adults, since great numbers of young 

 and half-grown examples were taken during the Survey in Inishbofin Harbour, 

 while about 100 have frequently been taken by one of us in a single haul of the 

 shrimp-trawl on the Humber ground already referred to. 



The synonymy of the species is now so generally understood that it is unneces- 

 sary for us to make more than a passing allusion to the fact that the female and 

 young were long regarded as distinct ;$ and it appears to us that such descriptive 

 observations as we have to make may be most conveniently reserved for comparison 

 with the next species. 



* " Cat. Fish. Brit. Mus." iii. p. 369, f "Ksh- Gtt. Brit." i. p. 176. 



+ Male, C.lyra. Linn., " Syst. Nat," i. p. 433, tf< ««<e<. ^^wr. 



,, Uranoscopiis lyra. Gronov. ed. Gray, p. 42. 



Female and young, . C. dracunculus. Linn., loo. cit., et auct. plur. 



,, ,, . . U. dracunculus. Gronov. ed. Gray, loc. cit. 



Young (?), .... C. elegans. Lesueur, "Bull. Soc. Phil. Paris," 1814, p. 6. 



Young male, . . . U. niieropterygius. Gronov. cd. Gray, loc. cit. 



