Indian Deep-sea Fishes. 139 



bouring parts of the Atlantic, Japan, Mauritius, Andaman 

 Sea. 



Trachichthys Darwinii^ Johns. : Madeira, Japan, Bay of 

 Bengal. 



Antigonia capros, Lowe : West Indies, Madeira, Arafura 

 Sea, Japan, Bay of Bengal. (Compared with ' Challenger ' 

 duplicate.) 



Neoscopelus macrolepidotus , Johns. : West Indies and 

 neighbouring coasts of the United States, Madeira, Austra- 

 lasian Seas, Andaman Sea. (Compared with a ' Challenger' 

 duplicate.) 



j\facrurus (Malacocephalus) Ia?vis, Lowe : North and South 

 Atlantic, seas of Northern Europe, Mediterranean, Hawaiian 

 Islands, Andaman Sea. 



From the above list we see that of the 33 species of deep- 

 sea fishes (excluding the undoubted nectic species) that India 

 is known to share with other parts of the world, 17 species, or 

 51 per cent, (and 10 per cent, of the whole fish-fauna in 

 question), are found in certain very suggestive areas of the 

 North Atlantic, namely off the West Indies and neighbouring 

 coasts of America and in the approaches to the Mediterranean 

 Sea. _ 



This of itself would be almost enough to suggest a former 

 direct connexion between those waters and the seas of India; 

 and the fact that so many of the species under consideration 

 also occur in Japan is suggestive of still further-reaching 

 sea-connexions. 



So far as the Japanese seas are concerned, this idea has 

 long been familiar to Dr. Giinther, who, in the ' Journal of 

 the Linnean Society' for 1874-76 (Zoology, vol. xii.), 

 pp. 107-139, gives a list of 29 Japanese shore-fishes, of which 

 22 also belong to the Mediterranean and 18 to the West- 

 Indian fauna, and 11 are common to all three regions, and 

 who, in the ' Introduction to the Study of Fishes,' p. 270, 

 says, in comparing the shore-fishes of Japan with those of the 

 Mediterranean : — " We can only account for the singular 

 distribution of these shore-fishes by assuming that the Medi- 

 terranean and Japanese seas were in direct and open commu- 

 nication with each other within the period of the existence of 

 the present Teleosteous fauna." 



It is not, however, alone, or even principally, from the 

 Fishes that the zoological evidence * in support of a former 



* " Zoological,'' because I understand that the geological evidence iu 

 favour of a former (Eocene or Miocene) open-sea connexion between the 



