KA.TA BADIA. 25 



tral surface, wliere there is more of white tlian of brown. Length of the 

 type about 20.4 inches. " Talvcn in hit. about 80" N., at sea, west of the 

 northern coast of Spitzbergen, the most northerly locahty, too, in whicli 

 this genus is yet l^nown to occur." 



Amono- the known species of the genus the closest affinities of Iiuia hadia 

 apparently are not found in the species of the more immediate vicinage of 

 its habitat, but rather with those noted above from the seas around the 

 Faroes or northward and through them with the thornback of the eastern 

 coasts of the United States, a variety of Puda radiata Don. With R. cquato- 

 rialisJ. B., 1889, taken by the "Albatross" between the Galapagos Islands 

 and Ecuador, it does not appear to be very closely related, and the same 

 statement may be made concerning species in northern waters off the coasts 

 of North America to Alaska. Its affinities with the southern forms, of 

 Chili and Patagonia, are only remote; Baia hrachynra Giint. approaches 

 as much as any of them, yet it is very different, and none of those from 

 the eastern coasts of South America makes a nearer approach. Lnme- 

 diately across the isthmus also no very close kinship is to be noticed in 

 either R. Acldciji Garm., 1881, from the Yucatan Banks, or Pi., alia nom. 

 sp. n., from the northern portion of the Gulf of Mexico. The specific desig- 

 nation Raia alia is here first applied to the type figured by Goode and Bean 

 in 1896, Oceanic Ichthyology, PI. VII., fig. 23, under the title Rnia AcUei/i. 

 R. alia differs from that species in lacking the wide space between the 

 dorsals, in having closely set spinnles on tail and back, in having a group 

 of tubercles on the middle of the back, in having tubercles on the crown 

 between the orbital series, in having series of tubercles on the lateral edges 

 of the disk, and in the lack of spots on the upper surface, particularly in 

 the lack of the large transversely oblong spot of brown on each pectoral 

 opposite the forward part of the abdominal cavity. Still farther removed 

 are R. ornata Garm., 1881, taken by the "Blake" off Alligator key, Florida, 

 or R.phdonia Garm., 1881, taken by the same vessel off the coasts of South 

 Carolina. In this connection it may be pointed out that the skate figured 

 by Goode and Bean, 1896, Oc. Ich., PI. VII., No. 24, as R. ornata is not of 

 that species but is a very young specimen of R. plufonia or an allied form. 



