302 



worm, which gets into the vesicle, and performs these revolutions 

 while feeding on the young muscle, carrying it round with it, though 

 itself invisible. 



The young remain in the oviduct, which is like a honey-comb, 

 till they arrive at the size fitting them to provide for themselves; and 

 leave it in October and November; and when ready to leave it a 

 canal is formed, through which they pass out, an operation facili- 

 tated by the motion of the foot of the parent, which is partly sur- 

 rounded by the oviduct. 



On a newly discovered Genus of Serpentiform Fishes. By I. Har- 

 wood, M.D. F.L.S. Professor of Natural History in the Royal In- 

 stitution of Great Britain. Communicated by Daniel Moore, Esq. 

 F.R.S. Read February 1, 1827. [Phil. Trans. 1827, p. 49.] 



Dr. Harwood begins this paper by observing, that in no department 

 of natural history have descriptions been more unsatisfactory than 

 such as relate to certain productions of the ocean, which, from the 

 immeasurable depths which conceal them, and absence of the cir- 

 cumstances best adapted to their multiplication, very rarely present 

 themselves to our notice. It is to this rarity of opportunities for 

 exact examination that we are to attribute the wonderful accounts of 

 sea-monsters, which have from time to time appeared, such as the 

 Kraken, the Sea Serpent, &c. 



The author, after this preface, proceeds to describe a very extra- 

 ordinary marine animal, taken by Captain Sawyer, of the ship 

 Harmony, which was in pursuit of the bottle-nosed porpoise, in lat. 

 62 N., and 57 W. long. He observed a body floating on the 

 water, which he at first took for an inflated seal-skin, but on a nearer 

 approach it proved to be a living animal. Exhausted by unavailing 

 efforts to gorge a fish, seven inches in circumference, it allowed itself 

 to be taken, and was preserved by Captain Sawyer in rum. On a 

 cursory view it might be taken for an extraordinary kind of sea- 

 serpent, and this idea would be even supported by a closer exami- 

 nation of parts of its structure. 



It offers points of discrepancy, however, from the several genera of 

 animals nearer allied to it, so important as to entitle it to a distinct 

 place in classification, especially as regards the jaws, which, with 

 the exception of the apparent want of interarticular bones, are truly 

 serpentiform, and from the possession of an enormous elastic sac, 

 which is seemingly a receptacle for air only. The first of these cha- 

 racters seeming to the author ler>st liable to vary, he suggests the 

 term Ophiognathus as applicable to the genus. 



He then proceeds to give a technical zoological description of the 

 genus, and to state the points in which it essentially differs from the 

 genera nearer allied to it, after which he gives a more special de- 

 scription. 



Its body is of a uniform purplish black, except the filamentous ex- 

 tremity of the tail, which is much lighter. Its total length 4 feet 



