2258 The Zoologist. — August, 1870. 



specimen has to be distinguished, — the Rashleigh shark and the 

 broadheaded gazer, for which he formed his genus " Poljprosopus." 



My fish differs from them in the essential particular that its vision 

 or gaze is not directed forward ; but a careful consideration of all the 

 facts inclined me to think that probably this forward outlook was noted 

 in these two sharks b}' an error of observation. Confessedly Couch 

 never saw either of the two fish he describes : he is careful to state that 

 the account and figure which he had of the gazer came from a person 

 " curious, but scarcely well-informed." He tells us of the Rashleigh 

 shark that he had the figure of it from a gentleman who was a 

 naturalist, but it does not appear that that gentleman saw the fish 

 himself, and the very loose description which was all he could give of 

 it is almost conclusive that the fish was never seen by a naturalist 

 acquainted with fish. Besides which, in the sketch of the fish given 

 there is an utter absence of any attempt to account for a mouth, and a 

 torn and ragged dorsal is accepted as a perfect fin. This absence of 

 attempt to account for a moulh is also a prominent feature in the 

 sketch of the gazer ;* and I remarked in my fish that when it had 

 been dead for twenty-four hours, and its gills had lost the elasticity of 

 life, they fell forward in a flabby mass, totally concealing the mouth, 

 and presenting an appearance not unlike the figure of the head of the 

 gazer given by Couch (vol. i. p. 69), only that the eye did not look 

 forward and the gill-openings were on and not behind the broad part 

 behind the snout. 



Considering these things and the unwieldy size of the two fish 



* This refers to the figure given in the body of the work (vol. i.). In the 

 Appendix to Couch's Fishes is given another, and much more accurate, figure of the 

 same fish; but the shapes of the fins are doubtless peculiar, and on comparing them 

 with the letter-press they will be found not to scale. A better description of the same 

 fish is to be found in the Transactions of the Penzance Natural History and 

 Antiquarian Society for 1854, in a paper by the same Mr. Couch, "On two Species 

 of Sharks believed to have been confounded together under the name of ' The 

 Basking Shark'" (p. 234). In this he mentions the small ray-like teeth of the 

 gazer, and, noticing the diflTerence in bulk between it and the Rashleigh shark, 

 supposes the former may have been an emaciated specimen of the latter, and that its 

 sick condition may have accounted for its presence in shallow water, saying, " There 

 can be no doubt that its usual residence is at the bottom, and that, too, in very deep 

 water." Couch also says in this article, " The summit of the head was much wider than 

 the body above the gill-openiugs;" and he thinks this another sign that the fish was 

 emaciated. Owing to his not having seen the specimen he was led into an error 

 about the size of the head, but this description of the bulk of the body at the gill- 

 covers precisely agrees with the observed shape of my fish. 



