APR 10 



THE OTTAWA NATURALIST. 



Vol. X. OTTAWA, JANUARY, 1897. No. 10. 



THE LIVING CHIM/ERA AND ITS EGG. 



By Prof. E. E. Prince, B.A., F.L.S., 

 Dominion Commissioner of Fisheries, Ottawa. 



Few naturalists have ever had the advantage of seeing alive 

 that somewhat rare and profoundly interesting fish, the 

 oceanic Chimsera or Rabbit Fish. Its grotesque outline and 

 staring eyes so impressed Frank Buckland that he pionounced 

 it " worthy the imagination of the most barbarous Chinaman 

 that ever designed a figure-head for a piratical war-junk.'' In 

 1891 two or three specimens were obtained off Achill Head, Co. 

 Mayo, at a depth of 127 fathoms, but as I had just left the 

 vessel , the " Fingal," on which I was acting as naturalist to the 

 Fisheries Survey, I missed seeing these remarkable examples 

 alive. In 1895, during my cruise along the Pacific Coast, I had 

 the privilege on many occasion of examining living specimens, 

 the species occurring there (viz Chimcera collaei, Bennett) 

 being netted fairly numerously in the inshore waters. In 

 British and Norse seas the Chimaera is taken at considerable 

 depths, say 70 to 200 fathoms ; but in British Columbia this fish 

 is frequently found in the drag seines used for taking salmon 

 this kind of net being necessarily hauled in very shallow bay 

 and estuaries. 



The length of the fish varies from 12 inches to 30 or },<6 

 inches and the head is disproportionately large, bluntly tapering 

 in front, flattened on the top, and below sloping back to the 

 mouth, which is quite underneath the head, some distance front! 

 the tip of the snout as in the sharks. The long body narrows 



