1910.] AND INVERTEBRATES OP ST. HELENA. 115 



1'emale is a little more than 5 ins. in length, the male about 6 ins. ; 

 but Oarus in his ' Fauna Mediterranea ' gives the maximum length 

 as 22 cm. or 84- ins., which is as great as at St. Helena. Specimens 

 from Madeira in the British Museum seem more different from 

 mine. Two of the three seem to have been allowed to dry at 

 some time, but the third is well preserved ; it is a male only 6^ ins. 

 long and yet with the sexual characters fully developed, and it 

 seems, therefore, that the species does not reach so large a size at 

 Madeira. In these specimens also the anterior profile of the head 

 is more vertical than in mine, and the top of the head is nearly 

 level with the highest point of the dorsal edge of the body, while 

 in mine it is distinctly lower than the latter. In these Madeira 

 specimens the upper eye forms a projecting angle in the profile, 

 which is much less the case in mine. Steindachner states that 

 the colour and markings vary considerably in examples from 

 different localities : in specimens from Teneriffe the ground-colour 

 is very dark violet-brown, the large bluish spots usually absent, 

 and there are instead numerous small blue specks. Valenciennes 

 describes his E. serratus of the Canary Isles as " sans aucune 

 tache " and not the same as the maderensis of Lowe. He gives its 

 length as 14 or 15 cm. or up to 6 inches. 



The species is not uncommon at St. Helena, but at the same 

 time not very abundant. I caught them in a small otter-trawl 

 worked from a steam-launch. On March 15th, I obtained six in 

 one haul and one in another at about 30 fathoms, from Jamestown 

 westwards to Lemon Valley : the ti-awl brought up no stones or 

 gravel but quantities of the coarse sponge mentioned elsewhere 

 in this paper. On March 19th, I caught about a dozen specimens 

 in 15 fathoms in Prosperous Bay on the windward side of the island, 

 and a single specimen in a haul in 10 fathoms. So far as I could 

 ascertain a trawl had never before been used at St. Helena and 

 so many specimens of this fish, locally known as the flounder, had 

 never before been seen ; in fact many of the residents had never 

 seen it before. 



This species is not known to occur outside the Atlantic, but it 

 is possible that the R. spinosus of Poey found at Cuba is the same 

 species. One of the characters of P. p>odas is the presence of 

 minute spines at the bases of the dorsal and ventral fins, formerly 

 described as belonging to scales, but now known to be pro- 

 jections of the tips of the interspinous bones ; these occur in 

 Poey's species but in no others. Most of the other species have 

 the rays of the pectoral of the upper side elongated in the male, 

 but this character is wanting in podas. 



ScORP^ENA SCROFINA. 



Scorpcena scrofina Cuv. & Val. ix. p. 465 ; Melliss. 

 Mail or Rock Gurnard, Melliss. 



D. XI; I. 10 ; V. Ill, 6 ; P. 21 ; Plv. 6 ; Sc. 46 ; Br. 7. 

 Height of body 3^ in total length. Length of head just over 

 3 in total length. Snout from front of orbit to end of upper 



8* 



