134 Messrs. J. Wood- Mason and A. Alcock on 



lieii^lit of the compressed body nearly one fifth the total 

 without the caudal. The length of the obtusely-pointed 

 depressed snout is contained about 3^ times in tlmt of the 

 head. The eyes, which converge anteriorly, are between 

 one fifth and one sixth of the head-length in diameter, and 

 are more than their own diameter apart. The large nostrils 

 are situated close together immediately in front of the eye. 



Mouth-cleft slightly oblique; the maxilla reaches just 

 behind the vertical through the anterior border of the orbit. 

 A row of small teeth in each jaw and on the palatines. 



Gill-openings very wide, the membranes entirely separate 

 and overlapping broadly ; a great part of the gill-cover is 

 formed by the broad flat branchiostegal rays, which are 

 uncovered by the opercle from their very bases ; the oper- 

 cular bones, which are extremely thin, are invested by the 

 same tough black skin that, covers the head ; the gill-laminaj 

 are coarse and the gill-rakers on all the arches long and 

 lamellar ; pseudobranehia^ small. 



Head naked, body covered with large cycloid scales, which 

 are deciduous everywhere but on the lateral line ; small scales 

 also invest the bases of all the fins. A scale from the flank 

 measures about 7*5 millim. in the horizontal and about bo 

 niillim. in the vertical diameter. 



The dorsal and anal fins arise just in advance of the poste- 

 rior third of the body (measured without the caudal), and the 

 base of the former, which begins a little in advance of the 

 latter, is two thirds that of the latter in extent. Caudal 

 deeply forked, with very numerous rudimentary rays at its 

 base. Pectorals broad, in length a little more than the post- 

 orbital portion of the head. The ventrals arise just abaft of 

 midway between the pectorals and anal ; they are broad and 

 reach more than halfway to the anal. 



IStomacli small, siphonal. The intestine, which, when 

 lun-avclled, is about 2^ times the entire length of the tish, 

 consists of two portions, which both in structure and arrange- 

 ment arc quite diflerent from one another : the anterior tive 

 sixths is thin-walled and of small calibre, and is intricately 

 coiled in a globular mass situated in the anterior fourth of the 

 abdomen, the coils being held by a long mesentery ; the pos- 

 terior sixth is wide, but with walls so thick as to almost 

 block the lumen (in the contracted state), the mucosa in this 

 condition being thrown into nunu'rous wide longitudinal folds ; 

 it ])asses straight down the middle of the abdominal cavity 

 unsupported by mesentery. There are nine large long pyloric 

 cteca in a pectinate arrangement. 



In a female with nnich-enlargod ovaries containing ova 



