132 GREATER FLYING FISH. 



appear that they are at any time caught with a hook; and 

 their food is supposed to be the very small molluscous and 

 crustacean animals which are known to abound at times in every 

 part of the ocean. 



I have possessed an example which measured twenty inches 

 and a half in length, but that which furnishes the description 

 is only sixteen inches, and as Rondeletius remarks, excluding 

 the fins, the general form bears a near resemblance to that 

 of the Grey Mullet. The head wide, flattened between the 

 eyes, which are large; the mouth wide across, but the gape 

 small; lower jaw beyond the upper, teeth in both scarcely 

 perceptible; nostrils close before the eye. The body round 

 and wide across the back, compressed at the sides, more com- 

 pressed and slender towards the tail. Scales rather large, with 

 a separately marked line of them passing low down on the 

 sides from beneath the root of the pectoral fin, to the root 

 of each ventral. These do not form the lateral line, which, 

 however, is only faintly marked. The first plate of the gill- 

 cover passes backward below in a blunt angle. Pectoral fins 

 wide, high on the body in proportion to other abdominal fishes, 

 and in the example described nine inches in length, with fifteen 

 rays, which are thin and branched, but broad, and the thin 

 edge in contact, with the membrane; the membrane also thin, 

 and I am informed that when newly from the water it is 

 transparent. These fin-rays lengthen to the fourth. Ventral 

 fins long and wide, with six rays, the first short and wide, and 

 when stretched back it reaches so far as to cover the beginning 

 of the anal, in which particular, among others, this species is well 

 distinguished from the Lesser Flying Fish, (E. volitans,) in 

 which these fins are comparatively small, as also placed more 

 forward on the body; although not so much so as is generally 

 represented in published figures. The third and fourth rays of 

 these fins are the longest, and they admit of great expansion. 

 Dorsal fin far on the hind part of the body, high at first, then 

 narrower, and the last rays lengthened. The anal begins opposite 

 half the length of the dorsal, of the same shape, and they end 

 opposite each other; the rays of both simple. The tail forked, 

 lower lobe longest. Colour bluish grey, or dark on the back, 

 pale blue on the sides, white below. 



The structure of the organs of flight in these fishes, and 



