The Zoologist — August, 1870. 2259 



figured by Couch, one twenty-nine feet, four inches long and the 

 other over sixteen feet, it seems to me more probable that unskilful 

 observers should be mistaken than that two sharks should wholly 

 depart from the shark type of eye. 



Couch's figure of the broadheaded gazer, from the gills inclusive to 

 the tail, precisely agrees with my fish, and but for the observed girth 

 of the Rashleigh shark I should be much inclined to say they are all 

 three of the same species offish; but, as the facts stand, I for myself 

 am inclined to think that the Rashleigh shark was a basking shark of 

 Couch and Yarrell (which species itself has apparently never been 

 observed with sufiicient care to establish the shape and position of its 

 mouth), and that Pennant's basking shark, the broadheaded gazer and 

 my fish are sharks having afl5uities to the basking shark, but sufficient 

 specific differences to establish them as distinct : and if I were called 

 upon to describe my fish by the peculiarity which first struck observers 

 I should call it the " snouted shark " (say Squalus rostratus or Ceto- 

 rhinus rostratus). 



On the inner side of the pectorals and on each side of the fork of 

 the tail were colonies of the ordinary shark parasite. 



The skin of the fish has been successfully set up for the Natural 

 History Museum at Penzance. 



In the very same coil of the net which enclosed the shark I took 

 two other fish which would have been well worth a separate notice 

 under any circumstances. They were two specimens of the black fish 

 {Centrolophtis pompilus, Cuvier). They were meshed in the net, and 

 had evidently struggled severely before they were tied up tightly in 

 the roll of net made by their gigantic fellow-prisoner. At first I 

 thought they might have been swallowed by the shark and ejected in 

 his struggles ; but the fact of their being meshed was against this, and 

 on careful search afterwards I found them quite fresh and free from 

 any trace of digestive action. Recollecting the habits of the pilot fish, 

 and that the Pompilus is allied to it, it is curious to observe the 

 presence of these two in company with a strange shark, but further 

 observation alone can show whether their simultaneous presence and 

 capture in our waters was a mere coincidence, or whether the black 

 fish were in company with the shark. It is to be remarked that the 

 solution of this question will probably have a most important bearing 

 on the question of the identity or otherwise of my shark with the 

 basking shark of Pennant. The black fish is a southern fish, the 



