210 Mr. A. Alcock on the Bathyhial Fishes 



The intestine is convoluted ; the anal papilla is very 

 slender, and in the male it is very much longer than it is in 

 the female. Vertebra? 8/13. 



Colours in life : — The upper half of the head|and bodj and 

 all the fins range from sepia-grey to blotchy blacky and the 

 ventral surface of the body is transparent and colourless ; the 

 first dorsal fin has in the male a central black patch, and in 

 the female a central, black, white-edged ocellus. 



Total length 5 inches. 



Hab. Vide Station 96. About seventy specimens. 



Anacanthini. 



Family Ophidiidse. 

 Neobythites, Goode & Bean. 

 13. Neobythites pterotus ^ sp. n. 



With long feathery pectoral fins which reach to the origin 

 of the anal fin. 



B. 7-8. D. circa 120. A. circa 95. V. 2. P. 18. CIO. 



Snout pointed ; head and body compressed ; tail long and 

 tapering, ending in a long narrow caudal fin, which is free 

 except at its extreme base. 



Head with its mucous cavities well developed ; its length 

 is about f that of the entire trunk, or about ^ of the total 

 without the caudal ; its maximum height behind the occiput is 

 more than \ of its length, or \% of the maximum body-height ; 

 its breadth is nearly half its length ; there is a strong acute 

 spine in the upper half of the operculum, but no other arma- 

 ture. Snout pointed, overhanging the mouth ; its length, 

 less than its breadth, is 31 in the length of the head, or twice 

 the major diameter of the eye, which is deeply set beneath 

 the skin without any orbital fold ; interocular space convex, 

 1\ times the diameter of the eye ; nostrils very large, one near 

 the tip of the snout, the other at the angle of the eye. Cleft 

 of mouth wide, oblique ; maxilla more than half as long as 

 the head, expanded and scaly at its posterior end j in repose 

 the lower jaw is completely included within the upper ; villi- 

 form teeth in narrow bands in jaws, in a V-shaped patch on 

 the vomer, in broad elliptical bands on the palatines ; entire 

 oro-branchial cavity intense black. 



Gill-cleft very wide, the membranes being united only quite 

 anteriorly ; branchiostegals (in the one specimen obtained) 

 seven on the right side, eight on the left ; gill-lamina3 very 



