42 DEEP SEA FISHES. 



to within an inch of the end of the tail. All this indicates that the tail of 

 that which served as the type was deformed and incomplete : the deformity, 

 in all likelihood, being of embryonic origin. Proportioned as the new one, 

 the tail of the type would have been seventeen inches long, instead of which 

 it was but little more than ten. Completed, the type would have had a 

 total length of sixty-six inches, to a circumfei'ence of eleven and a half. 

 The more recent specimen had a length of forty-eight to a circumference of 

 ten and a half inches, which made it rather less slender and snake-like than 

 its predecessor. Another difference occurred in the dentition, which, in the 

 last examined, showed variations in the number of denticles between each 

 lateral cusp and the median : sometimes there were two, sometimes but one. 

 The tropeic folds, abdominal keel, were present as on the specimen from 

 which the original description was taken." 



Glinther's "Challenger" Report, likewise of 1887, confirmed this and made 

 important additions to knowledge of the anatomy from specimens caught 

 in deep water in Yeddo Bay, opposite Tokyo, that is, about the locality from 

 which the type was secured. The range was not extended until 1890, when 

 Collett, Bull. Soc. Zool. de France, p. 219, published the fact of the occur- 

 rence of this shark off Funchal, Madeira. In 1897 he still further extended 

 the distribution by the identification of a specimen taken in Varanger Fjord, 

 Norway, at a depth of about one hundred and fifty fathoms. The last is 

 the longest specimen yet taken, being about six feet three inches in length. 

 It is a female, and compared with the males and females previously taken 

 indicates that this sex is the larger. The shortness of the snout, and the 

 position of the nostrils, in the colored figure of the head in Collett's paper 

 (S^raftryk af Universitetets Festskrift til Hans Majesta^t Kung Oscar II. 

 i Anledning af Eegjeringsjubilajet 1897, with 2 plates) would indicate 

 specific differences, but comparison with his descriptions dispels any such 

 ideas. If the Norwegian specimen is not identical in species with those 

 from Tokyo it certainly is very closely allied. To be sure there are differ- 

 ences, as in the numbers of branchial rays, and the numbers of rows of 

 teeth, but apparently these are, as Collett remarks, quite within the range 

 of individual variation. 



The discovery of a fossil Chlamydoselachus, C. Lmvleyi, from the Pliocene 

 of Tuscany, by Davis, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1887, p. 542, has added some- 

 thing to a knowledge of the early history of the genus ; and beyond this 

 some advance has been made toward the determination of relationships in 



