The Spotted Eagle Ray. 269 



Specimen No. 11, for 1913, was also a male, 2^^ feet wide, and was 

 examined on the same day as the preceding. With the epidermis on its 

 color was a blackish-brown ; with this off it was a leaden-gray. The spots 

 were cream-colored with dark centers. In the puUed-off epidermis they 

 were whitish with dark centers, and those in the flesh were of about the 

 same color, but were surrounded with fairly distinct dark-gray circles well 

 marked off from the general lead-gray body color. The spots over the 

 central part of the body ranged in shape and size from round ones having 

 an average diameter of 10 mm. to elliptical ones 10 by 18 mm. Those on 

 the head, between the eyes and extending into the spiracles, were smaller. 

 Those along the front edge of the left pectoral were about 20 in number. 

 No transverse bars were visible. 



The third of the rays preserved in ice was not examined until June 7. 

 It was a male and measured 2 feet 10 inches between the tips of its pectorals. 

 Nearly all of the epidermis was gone from this specimen, but those parts 

 still covered by it were blackish, while the others were a lead or steel-gray. 

 In the epidermis the spots were light gray and on the skin whitish with 

 dark centers. Each of the latter spots was surrounded with a dark ring 

 about half as wide as the spot. On the central and hinder parts of the body 

 the spots ran together to form oblong or dumb-bell-shaped spots. On the 

 front edge of the right pectoral about 27 spots could be counted. 



Transverse lines were visible — lines not bands. On running my finger 

 along them I found that they were formed by transverse canals in the f^esh 

 just under the skin, which could be made to swell with the contained liquid. 

 For the most part these were about an inch apart and traversed both spots 

 and interspaces. On the hinder part of the back they ran into the large 

 longitudinal canals marking off the outside limits of the abdomen. 



On the base of the tail a gray streak on each side ran back to the spines. 

 The dorsal was gray in front, black behind, and had a white spot at the 

 base. The tail was white on the sides and underneath back to the end of 

 the last spine; thence black to the tip. However, about a foot behind the 

 dorsal there was a white spot on the right and two on the left side. This I 

 had not noticed on any specimens before. 



My fourth Florida specimen was grained in the same locality as the 

 preceding, i. e., off Slaughter-house Point, Key West Harbor, on June 20. 

 I carried it at once to a wharf and noted its color before it was fully dead. 

 It was a full-grown male, 5 feet 2 inches wide. Its life color was a light 

 chocolate brown, darker toward the hinder edges of the fins, and the spots 

 were creamy white with dark centers. On the center of the back and on 

 the hinder parts of the body the spots were in the shape of dumb-bells, 

 figures 3 or 8, letters s, C, and u, and in oblong and roundish markings. 

 All the round spots had dark centers, but no outer circles were noted. 

 However, small round spots were found everywhere among the markings 

 just described. The large round spots are formed, as the fish grows older, 

 by the coalescence of the horns of the U-shaped markings. All sorts of 



