The Spotted Eagle Ray. 



285 



The older authors (Willughby, Ruysch, Jonston) either quote Marc- 

 grave or else utterly omit any references to the jaws. Even Euphrasen 

 (1790) contents himself with merely saying: "Mouth below, as in the 

 others of its kind, transverse, with very few and close fitting teeth "; from 

 which we may conclude that his examination was very superficial. 



Text-fig. 7. — Teeth of a Marina pastinaca, of Jamaica. After Sloane, 1697. 



Schneider (Bloch and Schneider, 1801) first quotes Euphrasen as to the 

 teeth, next gives Forster's description (see Lichtenstein, 1844), and then 

 speaks of a figure of the jaws of a Raja narinari belonging to Blumenbach 

 in Gottingen. Finally he thus describes a bisected, dried flagellate ray 

 which together with a pair of dried jaws had come into his possession: 



I found in it the same tooth structure as in the free jaws. In the upper jaw there 

 were 8 teeth in the form of the letter V and joined together by membrane; in the lower 

 there were 12, each imitating the letter f, all joined together by their crenate bases to the 

 maxilla and occupying its middle part, it being bare on each side. 



