Holt and Calderwood — Report on the Marer Fishes. 



501 



In the smaller examples of either sex the anterior rays are not elongated. It 

 will be noted from the above enumeration that there is no constancy in the order 

 of elongation in the males ; also, that the longest ray may be actually longer than 

 the head (specimen ii.), and that the seventh ray may be elongated (specimens 

 ii. and iii.), conditions which appear to have escaped the attention of otlier 

 observers. The elongation of the anterior rays in the large females seems to be 

 confined to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th rays, and, in the small series before us, shows a 

 certain regularity in order. Taking all our material into consideration it appears 

 that, in either sex, the 3rd ray is usually the most elongated, and the 6th (or 7th) 

 the least. 



The fin-ray formulfe of the large Plymouth females serve to show that the 

 sexual discrepancy in the large Irish examples is, so to speak, a matter of chance, 

 and not due to sexual dimorphism ; but, as in the case of the Irish series, we again 

 find that the formulae of the small specimens is lower than that of the large ones. 

 The enumeration of the rays of the large males and females certainly tends to 

 associate them as one species ; but the difficulty presented by the discrepancy 

 between these (which we may term A. lophotes, 3- and ? ) and the smaller undif- 

 ferentiated examples of either sex is by no means lessened by the Plymouth 

 material. 



