164 Deep^Sea Chimceras 



branded with the epithet Corynohphus Reinhardtii, 

 comes from the deeps off the Greenland coast, but is 

 a more respectable-looking creature, fourteen inches 

 long. 



But Melanocetus Johnsonii is really an object of 

 terror, although only four inches in length. When 

 closed, its lower jaw is vertical like the others, but 

 when open it droops below a right angle — the whole 

 front of the fish is, as it were, opened out. And it looks 

 exactly as if the back of its head had expanded into 

 a belly. But that useful organ, having to contain 

 very often a fish much larger than its owner, is a loose 

 sac attached by a cord, which floats about and ap- 

 parently allows its contents to escape into the body 

 as they are needed for its up-keep. Of course its colour 

 is a uniform black. 



Liocetus Murrayi is extremely similar to the fore- 

 going, or would be if the body, apart from the mouth, 

 had not apparently been turned round. Briefly it 

 looks as if Melanocetus had its belly on its back and 

 Liocetus in its usual position. 



These few selections may briefly serve to indicate 

 what manner of monsters abide in that mysterious 

 world beneath the waves, a world of darkness and 

 uniform cold, but, we also know, a world teeming 

 with strange life. It gives only just a subject picked 

 here and there from the enormous mass of matter 

 available, but it must be remembered that it really 

 is to that matter what the latter is to the creatures 

 still roaming in their sea-solitudes unknown and, save 

 for one another, unmolested. 



